From curriculum disputes to transgender rights to questions about the reach of federal power, the nation’s courts issued a series of high-stakes rulings this summer that have the potential to reshape the landscape of public education in the United States.
Together, these cases highlight the wide range of constitutional, civil rights, and policy debates happening across schools—and the central role courts continue to play in determining how classrooms function and how schools operate.
Here’s a look at major education-related rulings from late June through mid-September.
Supreme Court sides with parents in LGBTQ+ curriculum opt-out case
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 27 ruled that parents have a religious free exercise right to have their children excused from the use of LGBTQ+-themed storybooks in schools.
The 6-3 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor is significant for schools across the nation as it will allow parents with religious concerns to remove their children or possibly raise other objections to a range of curricular decisions. The court said the school board’s refusal to allow opt-outs unconstitutionally burdened the parents’ right to direct their children’s religious upbringing.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. emphasized that the Constitution protects parents’ rights to guide their children’s religious development.
Supreme Court upholds school E-rate program
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 27 spared the federal E-rate program for school internet connections from dismantling or major disruption by ruling against a lawsuit that challenged its funding structure.
In a 6-3 decision in Federal Communications Commission v. Consumers’ Research, the high court upheld the funding mechanism for the $9 billion Universal Service Fund, which distributes as much as $4 billion annually under the E-rate program to connect schools and libraries to the internet.
Supreme Court limits nationwide injunctions. Why that matters for education
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 27 allowed the Trump administration to largely enforce the president’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrant parents, an issue closely watched by educators and policymakers.
The 6-3 decision in Trump v. CASA emphasized that it was not ruling on the merits of the birthright citizenship question, but was instead limiting the use of universal injunctions, in which a single federal district judge blocks a policy nationwide.
That alone has implications for education, as multiple courts have issued universal injunctions to block executive orders of President Donald Trump and U.S. Department of Education policies on issues ranging from federal workforce reductions to bans on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in schools.
In the weeks and months after the decision, four lower courts have issued new injunctions blocking the birthright citizenship order, either nationwide or to particular classes of plaintiffs.
These injunctions rely on some wiggle room in the Supreme Court’s decision, allowing for class action suits or permitting states to pursue nationwide injunctions based on their arguments that only such universal actions can provide them complete relief to the challenges posed by the birthright citizenship order.
The Trump administration is appealing those injunctions, but only through normal channels and not by seeking emergency relief from federal appeals courts or the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court declines to hear cases on teacher, student political speech
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 30 declined to hear two cases involving highly charged political speech connected to public schools. One involved a teacher who was dismissed over social media posts that her school district deemed derogatory and disruptive. The other centered on a student who says he was bullied and harassed by classmates and teachers after wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.
Appeals court backs Fla. law barring transgender teacher’s use of her pronouns
A federal appeals court on July 2 ruled against a transgender female teacher who challenged a Florida law that bars K-12 education employees from using their chosen personal titles or pronouns if they do not correspond to their sex assigned at birth.
A 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, said the teacher’s First Amendment rights were not violated by the 2023 law because it imposes a restriction on her in-class speech as a government employee, rather than her speech rights as an individual.
Supreme Court to weigh state laws barring transgender athletes in girls’ sports
The U.S. Supreme Court on July 3 plunged into the national debate over transgender rights in schools, agreeing to hear cases next term involving Idaho and West Virginia laws that prohibit transgender students from participating in girls’ or women’s school sports.
Both laws were blocked by separate federal appeals courts, and the states’ requests for review have been sitting at the Supreme Court for almost a year. Both cases raise the question of whether such laws, which 27 states now have on their books, violate the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection guarantee. One of the cases also implicates Title IX, and the court’s eventual decision potentially could affect other transgender issues in schools, such as restroom and locker room access and name and pronoun policies.
Trump admin. can proceed with Ed. Dept. layoffs, Supreme Court rules
The U.S. Supreme Court on July 14, over the sharp dissent of three justices, granted a request by the Trump administration to allow the U.S. Department of Education to proceed with layoffs of roughly 1,400 employees.
The court’s order in McMahon v. New York is not a final ruling on the merits of the case challenging department reductions, filed by 21 Democratic state attorneys general. But it removes a barrier that had blocked the administration from taking further steps toward dismantling the department and reverses a lower court order instructing the Trump administration to reinstate those 1,400 employees.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, called the action “indefensible” and cast it as allowing President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “gut” the department’s workforce.
Appeals court backs Arkansas law targeting critical race theory
A federal appeals court has ruled that Arkansas may enforce its law prohibiting teachers from “indoctrination” of students with critical race theory or other so-called “discriminatory” ideologies.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, in St. Louis, unanimously vacated a federal district court’s preliminary injunction blocking the 2023 law, which is one of a handful nationwide that echoes anti-CRT rhetoric.
Some 17 other states, including Iowa and North Dakota (which, like Arkansas, are part of the 8th Circuit), have similar laws, executive orders, or other measures. President Donald Trump in January issued an executive order aimed at barring “radical indoctrination” in K-12 schools, including what he termed “discriminatory equity ideology.”
Federal appeals court ruling allows DOGE access to Education Department data
A federal appeals court on Aug. 12 threw out a preliminary injunction that had blocked the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing sensitive individual records at the U.S. Department of Education and two other federal agencies.
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Va., ruled 2-1 to vacate an injunction issued in February by a federal district judge. The order had barred DOGE access to data at the Education Department, the Treasury Department, and the Office of Personnel Management.
The lawsuit, filed by the American Federation of Teachers along with other unions and a few individuals, had argued that DOGE was “steamrolling into sensitive government records systems” in ways that put data at risk and violated the Privacy Act of 1974.
Appeals court sides with school in ‘come and take it’ gun hat dispute
A full federal appeals court, also on Aug. 12, sided with school administrators who required a Michigan 3rd grader to remove a hat picturing an AR-15 style rifle with the phrase, “Come and take it.”
The order in C.S. v. McCrumb by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, was accompanied by a sharp exchange between two judges.
Appeals court backs school in anti-abortion club’s flyer dispute
A federal appeals court has upheld an Indiana school district’s decision to limit flyers that a “Students for Life” club could post on school walls to listing only time and place details for meetings, excluding broader anti-abortion messaging.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, in Chicago, rejected a claim on behalf of the club’s founder, a 9th grader at Noblesville High School, that the school’s decision violated her First Amendment free speech rights.
- Read more about what the court said in its Aug. 14 decision in E.D. v. Noblesville School District. 🔎
Courts halt efforts to mandate Ten Commandments displays in schools
Courts have stepped in to block new laws in three different states requiring public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, citing constitutional concerns under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
In separate cases, judges found the measures in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas were each likely unconstitutional, drawing on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1980 decision in Stone v. Graham, which struck down a nearly identical Kentucky statute.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on June 20 upheld an injunction against Louisiana’s law, stressing that requiring displays would inevitably promote a religious objective not permitted by the Constitution.
U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks blocked enforcement of a similar statute in Arkansas in four districts, calling it “nearly identical” to the Kentucky law struck down more than four decades ago.
Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery temporarily blocked the law in 11 districts in Texas, ruling that it “impermissibly takes sides on theological questions.” With this decision, courts in all three states that have enacted such requirements have now at least partially halted them, for the time being.
Both Louisiana and Texas have asked the full 5th Circuit to take up review of those states’ laws, arguing that it would make sense to do so because a three-judge panel has ruled in the Louisiana case, and the Texas law is similar enough that the normal appeal to a three-judge panel could be skipped. (Arkansas is in a different appeals court circuit, the 8th Circuit.)
- Read more about the Louisiana law and case here. 🔎
- Read more about the Arkansas law and case here. 🔎
- Read more about the Texas law and case here. 🔎
Supreme Court rejects bid to block transgender boy from male restrooms at school
The U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 10 denied a request by South Carolina to pause a federal appeals court injunction allowing a 9th grade transgender boy to use school restrooms consistent with his gender identity while he challenges a state ban restricting that right.
Over the dissent of three justices in South Carolina v. Doe, the court said in a brief order that the denial was “not a ruling on the merits of the legal issues presented in the litigation. Rather, it is based on the standards applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this court.”
With childhood vaccination rates falling, debate on religious exemptions grows
A sharp debate over religious exemptions to school vaccine mandates is intensifying across the nation, just as vaccination rates of schoolchildren are declining and childhood diseases such as measles are making a comeback.
In West Virginia, which has never allowed religious exemptions under state law, a monthslong policy and legal battle over the governor’s efforts to require them by executive order is headed to the state’s highest court.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, has backed religious exemptions in West Virginia and warned other states and local jurisdictions to accept them or face a loss of federal funding.
And this fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to take up a case from Amish parents and schools in New York who are challenging that state’s 2019 elimination of religious exemptions.
