{"id":307287,"date":"2025-04-23T07:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T07:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=307287"},"modified":"2025-04-24T06:27:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T06:27:03","slug":"supreme-court-hears-oral-arguments-today-on-key-case-involving-parental-authority-and-freedom-of-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=307287","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court hears oral arguments today on key case involving parental authority and freedom of religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leo Hohmann \u2013 Leo\u2019s Newsletter April 22, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Last week I posted a seminal article<\/a><\/strong> about a Massachusetts couple being prosecuted for daring to reject, on religious grounds, their pediatrician\u2019s attempts to forcibly vaccinate their 9-month-old baby.<\/p>\n

When Social Services intervened and made an attempt to seize custody of all five of their children, the couple fled to Texas. They were eventually tracked down by an army of law-enforcement authorities from the local, state and federal levels. This couple are now being put on trial for kidnapping their own kids from state custody.<\/p>\n

The case has shocked the consciences of all Americans who thought they still lived in a free country and I warned that parental authority<\/em><\/strong> is emerging as THE ISSUE<\/strong> of our time. If something this fundamental can be stripped away from us, the state will see all other freedoms as fair game. It\u2019s just a matter of time. Total tyranny is right around the corner.<\/p>\n

Well, today I have another case to report that\u2019s just as outragious, showing how parental authority is indeed under attack in this once-free country of ours.<\/p>\n

It comes to us via Amy Howe at SCOTUS Blog<\/a><\/em><\/strong>. Her article confirms that last week\u2019s article is no outlier. The fact that a case like this was even litigated and that two federal courts ruled against the parents is remarkable. Now it\u2019s awaiting a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

By Amy Howe<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday (April 22) in the first of two cases in April involving religion and public schools. In Mahmoud v. Taylor<\/a><\/em><\/strong> a coalition of parents from Montgomery County, Md., contend that requiring their children to participate in instruction that includes LGBTQ+ themes violates their religious beliefs and thus their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion.<\/p>\n

Montgomery County, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., is the largest school district in Maryland and one of the country\u2019s most religiously diverse counties. The dispute before the justices on Tuesday began in 2022, when the county approved books featuring LGBTQ+ characters for inclusion in its language-arts curriculum. One book used for young children, Pride Puppy<\/em>, tells the story of a puppy that gets lost during a Pride parade. Another book tells the story of a girl attending her uncle\u2019s same-sex wedding.<\/p>\n

When the county announced in 2023 that it would not allow parents to opt to have their children excused from instruction involving the storybooks, a group of Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox parents went to federal court. They contended that the refusal to give them the option to opt their children out violated their constitutional right to freely exercise their religion \u2013 specifically, their ability to instruct their children on issues of gender and sexuality according to their faith and to control when and how these issues are introduced to their children.<\/p>\n

The lower courts rejected the parents\u2019 request for an order that would temporarily require the county, while the litigation continued, to notify the parents when the storybooks would be used and give them a chance to opt out of instruction. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit explained that on the \u201cthreadbare\u201d record before it, the parents had not shown that exposure to the storybooks compelled them to violate their religion.<\/p>\n

The parents came to the Supreme Court in September, and the justices agreed to take up their case.<\/p>\n

In their brief in the Supreme Court, the parents point to two different Supreme Court cases. First, they say, more than 50 years ago in Wisconsin v. Yoder<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, the justices \u201crecognized \u2018beyond debate\u2019 the First Amendment right of parents \u2018to guide the religious future and education of their children.\u2019\u201d This means, they say, that under the free exercise clause, parents can opt out of instruction that would \u201csubstantially interfere with their religious development.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Yoder<\/em>, the parents observe, the court held that Amish parents did not have to send their children to school after the eighth grade, because they believed that doing so conflicted with their religion and way of life. Here, the parents say, they are merely seeking to be able to excuse their young children from one particular subset of the public schools\u2019 instruction that \u201cdeliberately seeks to confound their religious values.\u201d<\/p>\n

And under the Supreme Court\u2019s 1993 decision in Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, the parents continue, the school board\u2019s policy is unconstitutional because it is neither neutral nor generally applicable. The board of education, the parents stress, has \u201clong allowed notice and opt-outs for any \u2018instruction related to family life and human sexuality.\u2019\u201d But by contrast, the parents write, they cannot opt to have their very young children sit out discussions on \u201csexuality and gender identity during English class.\u201d Moreover, they add, board members have displayed \u201cexplicit religious hostility\u201d to the parents who have objected to the curriculum, suggesting that they were aligned with \u201cwhite supremacists\u201d and \u201cxenophobes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration filed a brief supporting the parents. Sarah Harris, then the acting solicitor general, told the justices that because the county will not notify the parents before the LGBTQ-themed storybooks are used or give them an opportunity to opt out of instruction using those books, parents can only comply with their religious obligations to their children by withdrawing their children from public school altogether. \u201cThat,\u201d Harris contends, \u201cis textbook interference with the free exercise of religion\u201d \u2013 even if the parents\u2019 children do not ultimately feel pressured or coerced by the instruction using the storybooks.<\/p>\n

The Montgomery County Board of Education (along with the superintendent of schools, Thomas Taylor, and members of the board) counter that under both the Constitution and the Supreme Court\u2019s cases interpreting the free exercise clause, the parents must show that either they or their children are being coerced to change their religious beliefs or practice. The Supreme Court, they contend, has never held that when parents opt to send their children to public schools, their children\u2019s exposure to material to which their parents have religious objections is the kind of coercion needed to establish a claim under the free exercise clause, and it should not do so here.<\/p>\n

The board cautions that accepting the parents\u2019 argument that the lack of an opt-out option imposes a burden on their religious beliefs would \u201cleave public education in shreds\u201d \u201cby entitling parents to pick and choose which aspects of the curriculum will be taught to their children.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in any event, the board continues, the parents have not shown that in this case that there has been any coercion. They have not provided any evidence, the board stresses, \u201cthat any parent or child was penalized for his or her religious beliefs, asked to affirm any views contrary to his or her faith, or otherwise prohibited or deterred from engaging in religious practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court, the board writes, should not consider the parents\u2019 argument that the policy is not neutral and generally applicable, because they did not make it in the lower courts. But in any event, the board adds, the policy is in fact both of those things: \u201cIt treats comparable religious and secular activity exactly the same; no opt-outs from ELA lessons using the storybooks are permitted.\u201d And there is no indication that the policy was based on a hostility to religion. Instead, MCPS decided to stop the opt-outs because it received too many requests that were not<\/em> based on religion.<\/p>\n

A decision in the case is expected by late June or early July.<\/p>\n

This article was <\/em>originally published at Howe on the Court<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Should public schools be allowed to force your children to sit for instruction using ‘storybooks’ featuring homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals, queers and trannies? Two federal courts have said yes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39267,"featured_media":307288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=307287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307289,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307287\/revisions\/307289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/307288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=307287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=307287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=307287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}