Mahmoud v. Taylor

Majority — Alito

Joined by: Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett

The majority held that the Free Exercise Clause protects parents' right to direct the religious upbringing of their children, and that this right is violated when a government policy poses "a very real threat of undermining" the religious beliefs parents wish to instill. The Court reasoned that the five storybooks are unmistakably normative — designed to present certain values about same-sex marriage and gender identity as things to be celebrated, and contrary views as things to be rejected — and that young, impressionable elementary school children are especially susceptible to accepting those moral messages from authority figures. The majority further found that the board's teacher guidance, which encouraged teachers to affirm the books' viewpoints and to tell students who expressed contrary views that their comments were "hurtful," went far beyond mere exposure to new ideas and created the kind of psychological pressure to conform that Yoder found unconstitutional. Because this burden is of the same character as the one in Yoder, the Court applied strict scrutiny and concluded the board's no-opt-out policy failed that standard, since the board already permitted opt-outs in numerous other contexts — including for sex education and non-curricular activities — undermining its claim that opt-outs here were administratively impossible. The Court ordered the board to provide advance notice and opt-out rights to the petitioning parents for the challenged books and any similar materials while the lawsuit continues.

Dissent reasoning

The dissent argued that the majority invented a new constitutional right with no basis in the Court's precedent: the right to avoid exposure to school materials that carry messages inconsistent with a parent's religious beliefs. Justice Sotomayor wrote that the Free Exercise Clause has always been understood to prohibit the government from compelling individuals to give up or act against their religious beliefs — not to require the government to shield children from ideas that might conflict with those beliefs — and that mere exposure to objectionable ideas has never, in any prior case, been held to constitute a free exercise violation. The dissent contended that the majority badly misread Wisconsin v. Yoder, which involved a law that affirmatively compelled Amish parents to send their children away from home during a critical period of religious formation, and that the Court's own decision in Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Ass'n (1988) had already explicitly rejected the reading of Yoder that the majority now adopts. The dissent warned that the majority's new "very real threat" test has no meaningful limiting principle: given the enormous diversity of religious beliefs in the United States, countless books, teacher interactions, field trips, and classroom activities could trigger strict scrutiny, imposing impossible administrative burdens on public schools and effectively handing a subset of parents veto power over curricula that have long been left to democratically elected local school boards. Justice Sotomayor also argued that the majority reached beyond the question presented by deciding the strict scrutiny issue that the Fourth Circuit had not addressed, and that the democratic process — including a recent election that replaced three of seven board members — was already producing accountability without judicial intervention.