This week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a monumental case to decide whether religious parents have a right to opt their children out of lessons in public school that teach harmful ideas that violate their faith convictions. For the 2023 school year, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Maryland introduced storybooks into its language arts program intended to teach children that people can change their sex and that sexual relationships between people of the same sex are to be affirmed.

Ismail Royer, RFI’s Director of Islam and Religious Freedom, spoke on the steps of the Supreme Court at a rally in support of the parents in this case. In his speech, Royer urged people not to politicize the case but to see it as a defining moment for American pluralism:

We all know this decision is going to go our way. And it’s not going to be a victory for any right-wing cause, and it’s not going to be a loss for any left-wing cause. What it’s going to be is a victory for reasonableness and true pluralism, which is not part of the left or the right, it’s part of what it means to be a decent human being.

Watch Royer’s remarks here.

MCPS initially gave parents the right to opt their children out of the LGBTQ instruction at issue in this case, but then changed course, triggering a series of massive protests at school board meetings by Muslim and Christian parents who demanded the district restore the “opt out” option. A group of those parents, represented by Becket, then filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing that MCPS’s action violated their First Amendment right to the free exercise of their religion and their fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children. 

By the end of the two-and-a-half hours of oral argument, a majority of the justices seemed to agree with attorneys for the parents that allowing them to opt their children out of the “LGBTQ” lessons would be the best way to accommodate the parents’ constitutional rights and the school system’s claimed interests in teaching the materials. In an interview on a local Montgomery County TV station, Royer predicted a 7-2 decision in favor of the parents, with Justice Kagan joining the majority.

Since the beginning of this case in 2023, RFI has supported these parents on the ground by participating in rallies at MCPS school board meetings and testifying at those meetings. We also advocated for the parents in the media, including on The Ingraham Angle and Fox and Friends.

Furthermore, in an episode of our ongoing video series, Faith in the Law, Royer interviewed Prof. Douglas Laycock, a leading authority and scholar on religious liberty law. Royer and Laycock discussed this case and its implications for compulsory sex education, as well as its intersection with religious freedom and parental rights.

Finally, we have supported the parents in this case in the courts, joining four amicus briefs at every stage of the proceedings, including a brief filed last month in the Supreme Court alongside Christian Legal Society, Agudath Israel, First Liberty, Focus on the Family, and the National Association of Evangelicals.