School Must Allow Parent to Opt Kindergarten Student Out of LGBTQ+ Lessons, Court Rules

School Must Allow Parent to Opt Kindergarten Student Out of LGBTQ+ Lessons, Court Rules

In a little-noticed ruling last week, the Massachusetts federal district court upheld a parent’s right to opt his child out of LGBTQ+ kindergarten lessons and materials that conflict with his religion.

The father, a devout Christian, was likely to establish the school’s books posed “a very real threat” to the religious beliefs he wished to instill in his child, Judge F. Dennis Saylor, a George W. Bush appointee, concluded.

Soon after his son began kindergarten at the Joseph Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington, Massachusetts, this past fall, the father (“Alan L.”) learned the school was exposing its young students to books about sexual orientation and gender identity. The kindergarten curriculum ranged from books merely depicting gay and lesbian couples with children, to more provocative selections featuring cross-dressing men or gays and lesbians in black-leather outfits—all in direct conflict with his family’s religious beliefs on traditional marriage and gender identity.

The father promptly and repeatedly objected, asking the school to notify him and give him the opportunity to opt his child out of any lessons that normalized or promoted LGBTQ+ lifestyles. Time and again, the school refused. So the father sued, seeking a preliminary injunction from the court to enforce his rights.

The father’s case, Judge Saylor observed at the outset, was “controlled, almost in its entirety,” by the recent decision of the Supreme Court in Mahmoud v. Taylor. In Mahmoud, the Supreme Court allowed a group of Maryland parents to opt their children out of LGBTQ+-inclusive storybooks that undermined their religion, in violation of the parents’ constitutional right to direct the educational and religious upbringing of their children.

In fact, one of the books the father objected to, Prince and Knight, was also at issue in Mahmoud. It features a prince and knight who fall in love as they “gaz[e] into each other’s eyes, [and] their hearts beg[in] to race.” The whole kingdom later applauds “on the two men’s wedding day.” Another book by the same author, Maiden and Princess, tells a similar love story only as between two females in a royal court, according to the filing.  Still another, This Day in June, shows several same-sex couples kissing one another.

A number of other works “appear to teach that any arrangement of people—of whatever sex—can be a family so long as they ‘love each other,'” the court stated.

One might wonder why the school deemed any of this sexualized content appropriate to put in front of five-year-olds, regardless of one’s religious beliefs. To be clear, though, that was not the issue before the court. The court’s ruling hinged solely on the narrow question of whether the school provided adequate notice and opportunity to the father to opt his child out of its kindergarten LGBTQ+ instruction.

While the Lexington school district does have a system for religious opt-outs, the father claimed that the system was effectively unavailable. The school denied his repeated requests to opt his child out of instruction concerning sexual orientation or gender identity, claiming they were overly broad and requiring him to narrow his request to the specific books he objected to—a degree of specificity the father claimed he could not possibly provide.

The court sided with the father. The school’s refusal to provide the father with notice and the opportunity to opt his son out of the ojectionable material was unlikely to survive constitutional strict scrutiny, making it likely he would ultimately succeed on the merits of his First Amendment claim.

“Under well-established constitutional principles, defendants cannot force plaintiff to choose between foregoing the valuable benefit of having his child attend public kindergarten and exposing his child to materials that would burden his free exercise of religion.”

The court ordered the Lexington school to provide the father with notice and an opportunity to pull his five-year-old son out of the objectionable LGBTQ+ lessons.

The school must also provide the student with alternative instruction whenever he is removed from his classroom to comply with the order.

For good measure, the court prohibits the school from retaliating against the father for exercising his constitutional rights.

Above all, Judge Saylor makes clear that the burden is on the school, not the parent alone, to identify and disclose other LGBTQ+ materials in its kindergarten curricula—i.e., in addition to the ones the father already objected to—throughout the current school year.

And here, the court zeroes in on the problem that vexed the father in this case, a problem shared by all parents, especially in the secret social transitioning cases we’ve covered at Legal Insurrection: How can they challenge programs and policies of which they’re unaware—or worse, that they don’t find out about until it’s too late? In this sound ruling, Judge Saylor safeguards the parent’s religious right to opt his child out of objectionable LGBTQ+ content by requiring the school to disclose all potentially offensive material, including the books lurking on the bookshelves behind the schoolhouse doors.

Featured image via YouTube.

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