Mahmoud v. Taylor and the Storybooks That Brought Opt-Outs Back to School

Here is a school policy so strange it almost sounds like a parody: the district lets you opt your child out of the lesson, then, after parents start using the opt-out, announces that the opt-out is no longer available and that no one will be notified when the lesson is taught. The reason, in plain terms, was that too many families were using it.

I want you to sit with the logic. A right that works too well is a right the bureaucracy cannot tolerate. The Supreme Court did not tolerate that logic either. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, decided on June 27, 2025, it held that Montgomery County, Maryland, burdened the free exercise of religion when it refused to let parents pull their young children out of storybook lessons on sexuality and gender. It was a six-to-three decision, and it matters more than the headlines suggested.

What Montgomery County did

Montgomery County Public Schools is one of the largest districts in Maryland. In the 2022-2023 school year its board launched a set of new English language arts books, chosen to make the curriculum more inclusive. The five storybooks at the center of the case, which the Supreme Court describes as approved for students in kindergarten through fifth grade, were Intersection Allies, Prince & Knight, Love, Violet, Born Ready and Uncle Bobby's Wedding.

At first the district allowed notice and opt-outs. Then, in March 2023, the board announced that opt-outs would not be allowed for the storybooks and that families would not be given advance notice of when the books would be read. (Opt-outs from the separate family life and human sexuality unit remained available under Maryland law.) The stated worries were that opt-outs would be disruptive, that they would require teachers to manage separate groups of children, and that they might expose the children who stayed to stigma.

Parents objected. Their objections were not the same. They came from different faiths, and the case is a good reminder that this is not a one-religion fight.

The families

The lead plaintiff, Tamer Mahmoud, is a Muslim parent. Enas Barakat, also Muslim, joined him. Jeff and Svitlana Roman, a Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox couple, and Chris and Melissa Persak, who are Roman Catholic, were part of the group as well, together with Kids First, an association of parents and teachers. They sued the school board, asking for an order that their children be excused from the lessons.

They did not claim that the district could not teach about same-sex marriage or gender identity in a general sense, and they did not ask the court to take any book off the shelf. They asked for something smaller and older: notice, and the ability to say, "not for my five-year-old." They argued that the books were used to teach, in effect, a view of sexuality and gender that contradicted their religious teaching, and that the district's refusal to excuse their children put them to a choice between their faith and their child's public education.

The district court denied a preliminary injunction, and the Fourth Circuit ruled against the parents too. The Fourth Circuit majority held that the parents could prevail only by showing coercion arising out of exposure to the books, and found the record insufficient. The Supreme Court took the case.

The decision

Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the Court. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett joined. Justice Thomas also wrote a concurrence. Justice Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson.

The holding was this: the board's decision to introduce the books and deny any opt-out substantially interfered with the parents' religious development of their children and therefore burdened their free exercise. Because the district had not shown the burden could survive strict scrutiny, the parents were likely to succeed and were entitled to a preliminary injunction requiring the board to notify them in advance and allow their children to be excused.

The majority's reasoning had four steps, and the first is the one the lower courts missed.

1. Coercion is not required. The Fourth Circuit thought that a free exercise burden exists only if the government forces someone to violate belief, for instance by threat of penalty. The Supreme Court said no. In Wisconsin v. Yoder, the Court had recognized that compelling attendance at school could threaten the religious upbringing of children, and it had not required a showing that the state was making the family renounce its faith. Indirect pressure, through a program that undermines the religious formation of children, can burden the right.
2. Young children are impressionable, and the books were used to teach. The Court looked at how the books were meant to be used and called them "unmistakably normative." The district's own guidance for teachers anticipated children's objections and told teachers how to answer them. The Court gave weight to the age of the children: kindergarten through fifth grade.
3. Parents' religious interests in raising their children are protected. The Court traced its line from Pierce v. Society of Sisters and Meyer v. Nebraska through Yoder, which it described as the Court's recognition of the right of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children.
4. The district's reasons did not meet strict scrutiny. The district had given opt-outs before, and other districts allowed them. Administrative inconvenience did not carry the weight of a compelling interest.

The Court also stressed what it was not deciding. It did not hold that schools may not use the books. It held that they may not use them while denying parents the option of excusing their children. The remedy was an opt-out, not a ban.

The dissent, and the objection of administrability

Justice Sotomayor wrote the dissent, and it should be read by anyone who thinks the majority's holding is simple. She argued that the majority had read Yoder too broadly, and that exposure to ideas in a classroom is not a burden on religion. The Constitution, in her view, does not require schools to shield children from ideas their parents dislike. She warned that the decision would make it hard for public schools to function, because the range of religious objections to any lesson is as wide as the range of religions. The worry runs like this: once a child may be excused from this lesson, someone will ask to excuse a child from a lesson on evolution, or on a history that challenges a faith's account.

That is the argument from administrability, and it is the strongest objection to the ruling. I will state it as its defenders would: a school cannot run if every parent may veto each lesson. The state has an interest in a common curriculum. A classroom is a shared space. If the Constitution allows opt-outs for every sincere religious objection, the teachers will spend their days sorting children into groups, and the common school will turn into a patchwork.

I would answer it in four points.

First, the opt-out is not a veto. The remedy sought was that the child be excused from a lesson, not that the lesson be struck from the curriculum. The parent controls what his own child hears and leaves everyone else alone.

Second, the district had already built the machinery. Montgomery County allowed opt-outs from other parts of the curriculum, and many districts do. The record showed that the opt-out had worked before the board withdrew it. An administrative burden the district had been carrying without trouble was hardly a reason to say it could not be carried.

Third, the concern that every objection will be honored is overstated. The Court's test requires a substantial burden on religious exercise, and it looks to the nature of the lesson and the age of the children. An objection to a math problem is not the same as an objection to a lesson that touches the deepest moral teachings of a family's faith. Courts have always been able to sort sincere claims from pretexts, and they did so in Yoder.

Fourth, if the burden is real, the solution is to bear it and not to deny the right. The Constitution did not promise convenient government. It promised a limited one.

What a parent's request should cite now

I am not your lawyer, and nothing here is legal advice for your own situation. A parent who has a concern about a particular lesson should speak to an attorney who handles education and religious liberty cases. With that said, here is the general shape of how a parent can raise the matter, based on what the Court held.

• Read the policy. Find your district's opt-out rules. Many are in the parent handbook or on the district website, and your state's open records law lets you request the curriculum materials. A guide for that is in How to Request Records From Your School District and Actually Get Them.
• Ask in writing. A written request, sent to the principal and to the district office, creates a record.
• State the religious basis. Mahmoud turned on the parents' religious claim. The request should say what the family's faith teaches and why the lesson interferes with it. A policy preference is not the same as a religious objection, and the Court was clear that the burden must be on religious exercise.
• Cite the case by name. Mahmoud v. Taylor, 2025, and the line it follows from Wisconsin v. Yoder and Pierce v. Society of Sisters.
• Keep it respectful and specific. The aim is an excusal for one's own child, not a campaign against anyone else's.
• Know what the case does not do. It does not remove the lesson from the classroom, and it does not decide every other dispute over curriculum.

Some of the fuller policy ideas, such as districts telling parents what their children are being taught, are explored in Curriculum Transparency Laws, What They Require and Why They Help Teachers and Should Schools Tell Parents? The Case for Notification Policies.

The Founding and the family

You will not find "opt-out" in the Constitution, but the principle behind it is older than the document. The Declaration of Independence rests on the claim that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed and that the people hold rights no legislature gave them. The First Amendment forbids Congress to make a law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, and the Fourteenth Amendment carries that command to the states and their school boards.

The founding generation understood that the formation of the young is a matter of conscience. Madison, writing in 1785, argued that a person's duty to the Creator is prior to the claims of civil society. Whether or not you agree with every word of his argument, the structure is the one Mahmoud applies: before the school board speaks, the family has already spoken.

I also want to say something to my own side. The victory in Mahmoud is a victory for the Amish, for Muslims, for Catholics and for Orthodox Christians, for anyone who wants the freedom to raise a child in a faith. That is a feature, not a bug. A principle that protects only the views you share is a privilege. A principle that protects the dissenter you disagree with is a right. Conservatives should defend the opt-out for a Muslim father in Maryland as hard as for a Baptist mother in Texas, and I suspect the Court's lineup shows that the principle was applied evenly.

And one more word to the other side, offered fairly. The school board in Maryland was not staffed by villains. It believed it was building an inclusive classroom, and it was worried about the children who might feel singled out. Those are decent worries. But good intentions do not excuse a policy that tells families their faith is an inconvenience. The way to build a school that serves everyone is to ask the families first, and to respect the answer.

The case in brief

1. Montgomery County approved storybooks on sexuality and gender for young children, first allowed opt-outs, and then withdrew them in 2023.
2. Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox parents sued, asking not for a ban but for notice and an excusal for their own children.
3. In Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), the Court held six to three that the refusal burdened their free exercise, building on Wisconsin v. Yoder, and that the district could not justify it.
4. The dissent's warning about administrability is serious, but an opt-out is not a veto, and districts had managed opt-outs before.
5. The principle protects every faith and every family, and it is strongest when conservatives defend it for people unlike themselves.

What you can do: look up your own district's opt-out policy in the parent handbook, and if you cannot find one, ask the superintendent's office in writing where it is published.