Parental Rights Are Not Optional
Parental rights do not end the moment a child walks onto the school bus or through the classroom doors. Many school boards across the country, however, wrongly operate as if that’s true. Montgomery County, Maryland is home to one such school board. As activist school administrators and board members ignore or actively try to erode parental rights and authority, we are thankfully seeing an uprising of parents fighting back.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor which will decide whether it is acceptable for the Montgomery County Board of Education to show children materials containing radical gender ideology and political agendas not only without parental consent, but without an ability for families to opt-out.
In 2022, books allegedly intended to encourage “inclusivity” were introduced to students in pre-K through eighth grade. The books were extremely controversial. For example, one book assigning a project to children as young as three years old that requires them to identify images and words including “intersex flag,” “[drag] queen,” “underwear,” “leather,” and the name of an LGBTQ activist and sex worker.
Other books adopted by the Maryland County School Board pride parades and gender transitioning while advocating for a “child-knows-best" approach to social transitioning. The books tell students that their decision to transition to another gender doesn’t have to “make sense” and that physicians in the delivery room guess newborn babies' sexual identity in the first place. The activist curriculum also commands teachers to tell students they are “hurtful” if they question any of these harmful gender ideologies. Not only are these materials inappropriate, but they are pushing a clear agenda onto kids without parental consent or an ability to opt-out of the curriculum.
When the Board first adopted its Pride storybooks, it assured countless concerned parents they would be appropriately notified when the books were read and given the chance to opt their children out – a longstanding agreement guaranteed by the Board’s own policies. Their promise, however, quickly proved empty. In March 2023, the School Board issued a statement saying it would no longer adhere to parental notification requirements. One board member justified the Board’s decision by claiming that allowing opt-outs for reasons pertaining to religious beliefs or family values gives children
Yet the people experiencing real discrimination are local parents who should have the authority to make essential decisions about the education of their children free from manipulation or pressure from school or government officials. Policies that undermine parents’ rights to know what their child is learning have no place in the American education system.
Parents are fed up with whose top priority is to overwhelm classrooms with radical gender ideology and deny parents' consent regarding sensitive details of their children’s lives. The clear message from parents is that it should be up to a parent to decide what content their children are subjected to, and that children should not be subjected to radical ideology at the hands of the state.
In addition to parents fighting these activists before the Supreme Court, the current Administration has prioritized parental rights as a top priority, with the Department of Education schools to comply with parental rights laws.
Parents everywhere should have a right to opt their children out of any kind of classroom instruction but especially material that pushes specific ideologies on children. These fundamental parental rights should be a priority for schools, educators, and our institutions. The U.S. Supreme Court has immense power to restore parental rights to parents who desire nothing but the very best education for their children.
