U.S. S’Court rules parents can opt children out of classes with LGBT books

The United States Supreme Court ruled on Friday, June 27, 2025, that parents can opt children out of classes with LGBT storybooks.

The Supreme Court ruled in favour of Christian and Muslim parents in Maryland who sued to keep their elementary school children out of certain classes when storybooks with LGBT characters are read in a high-profile case involving the intersection of religion and LGBT rights.

The justices in a 6-3 ruling overturned a lower court’s refusal to require Montgomery County’s public schools to provide an option to opt out of these classes.

The lower court had rejected the argument made by a group of parents who sued the school district that its policy prohibiting opt-outs violated the Constitution’s First Amendment protections for the free exercise of religion.

“Today (Friday), we hold that the parents have shown that they are entitled to a preliminary injunction. A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill,” conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the decision, said.

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The court’s conservative justices were in the majority and its liberal justices dissented from the ruling, Reuters reported.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in the dissent that public schools educate children of all religions and backgrounds and help them live in a multicultural American society.

“That experience is critical to our Nation’s civic vitality. Yet it will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs. Today’s ruling ushers in that new reality,” Sotomayor wrote.

The Star