The lawsuit over story time and books with titles such as “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” and “Love, Violet” touches on the type of diversity and inclusion efforts the Trump administration has targeted on college campuses, and in government and private businesses. It is one of three major religious-rights cases on the Supreme Court’s docket this term.
The court will consider next week whether states can directly fund religious schools, in a closely watched case involving a proposed Catholic charter school in Oklahoma. The justices are also set to decide whether Wisconsin must extend a tax exemption to the social services arm of the Catholic Church — a decision that could have implications for other large, religiously affiliated employers such as hospitals.
For the past decade or so, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s conservative majority have consistently ruled in favor of strengthening religious freedoms and expanding the role of faith in public life.
The court has recognized that parents have an interest in directing their children’s religious and educational upbringing and affirmed parents’ rights to choose alternatives to public schools. But the court has not previously recognized a broad right to pick and choose aspects of a public school’s curriculum based on religious objections, which is the issue they will consider Tuesday.
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Puzzling quote from the ACLU’s David Cole, defending Montgomery County’s refusal to let parents opt their young kids out of reading LGBT-themed storybooks:
“No one is obligated to send their kids to public school, but if the court rules that religious parents can micromanage the education of their children in public school even where the effect is to undermine the school’s ability to do the job it needs to do for all of its students, that will seriously undermine the ability of public schools to do the work they need to do,”
Wall Street Journal:This gets to the parents’ second argument, which is that the district’s policy isn’t neutral, and the ending of opt outs was targeted. Their brief cites a member of the school board saying it’d be an impossible disruption if teachers had to “send out notices so white supremacists could opt out of civil-rights content.” The implicit comparison is between religious families and racists. Who needs a tolerance lesson?
