When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 27 that parents can exercise their religious right to have their children excused from the use of LGBTQ-themed storybooks in classrooms, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asserted that refusing to allow parents to opt out of such lessons “unconstitutionally burdened the parents’ right to direct their children’s religious upbringing.”
However, teacher advocates argue it’s educators who could now be unduly burdened as they work to manage the logistics and potential consequences of excusing certain students from individual lessons.
“Obviously we’re going to follow the law, so we’re going to need to figure out how to do this, but the burden is really going to be a mess on not only principals and school administration, but the individual classroom teachers as well,” said David Stein, president of the Montgomery County Education Association. The Montgomery County district in Maryland was at the center of the Supreme Court case.
When the Montgomery County district first began using five storybooks that feature LGBTQ+ characters and themes in elementary grades during the 2022-23 school year, it initially agreed to notify parents when the books would be taught, allowing their children to be excused from the instruction.
The school board rescinded the opt-out policy within a year, citing the inability to reasonably accommodate a growing number of opt-out requests from parents, board spokesperson Christie Scott said. A group of Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Ethiopian Orthodox parents then sued the district in response, asserting that the no-opt-out policy “infringed on parents’ right to the free exercise of their religion.”
Now, after the Supreme Court ruling, the school board will have to notify parents in advance when an LGBTQ-themed book will be used so they can have their children excused from that instruction.
Not all teachers used these books in class
But many teachers in the district likely never taught those books, even before the ruling, said Kira Mikkelsen, who taught 2nd grade at Cold Spring Elementary in Montgomery County this past year and will be moving to 4th grade in the fall.
Mikkelsen said her focus last year was on the new literacy curriculum introduced that year. She never found the time to read the supplementary LGBTQ-themed texts.
“My guess would be that most other teachers probably also experienced something similar to me,” said Mikkelsen. “There’s only so many minutes in the day that we can fit in reading aloud.”
A lack of training on how to talk with students about LGBTQ-inclusive subject matter could also steer teachers away from the material, Mikkelsen said.
“It’s sometimes hard enough to even think outside of the material we have in front of us, and it’s definitely much easier to approach subject matter when we’ve had some training on it,” said Mikkelsen, who added that she feels fairly comfortable and confident teaching these topics in an age-appropriate manner, but that not all educators feel the same.
“I do know there’s going to be teachers who would definitely have preferred to have some more targeted training before using these books,” she said.
Now, teachers will need to figure out where students whose parents opt them out of a lesson can go during those instructional periods.
“This last year, I had 27 kiddos in my class. … Let’s say that parents of three of those students request that they opt out,” said Mikkelsen. “As a teacher, I’m thinking, OK, where do those students go? Because we don’t have additional staff in any school who can just take kids and teach them different lessons.”
Stein, the MCEA president, noted that prior opt-out requests regarding sex education curriculum (now called family life) were easier to manage because they related to specific and isolated curriculum content.
“What we’re talking about here is, essentially, unlimited possibilities of families opting out of this or that—whatever they say is against their religious beliefs,” he said.
Teachers fear classroom divisions when parents opt out
Teachers may also find themselves grappling with classroom challenges that extend beyond logistics if families opt their children out of certain lessons.
“It’s just the nature of kids to be curious and to ask questions, like: ‘Why is that friend not sitting here with us? What’s going on?’” Mikkelsen said. “Students are going to have questions.”
And sometimes, she said, they can “be a little mean to each other.”
“We know that, but I think that this [opt-out situation] kind of sets that up to happen more often,” she said.
Carlie Rockwell, an 8th grade teacher at Mackinaw Trail Middle School in Cadillac, Mich., agrees.
“The ruling for opting out seems, to me, like it has the potential for more division in the classroom,” she told Education Week.
Rockwell also noted, in an interview with WLNS.com, that being labeled as “different” in some ways by peers can be “a really damning thing,” especially during adolescence.
Parents feared indoctrination on sensitive topics
Parents who sued Montgomery County argued that, without an opt-out option, elementary teachers’ use of LGBTQ-themed books in the curriculum “amounts to government-led indoctrination regarding sensitive matters of sexuality.”
But some advocates fear that allowing opt-outs will make it less likely for parents and educators to engage in productive conversations about LGBTQ-related topics.
“In the end, students are the ones who pay the price for censoring what books they can and cannot access and read,” said National Education Association President Becky Pringle in a statement after the Supreme Court ruling. “Educators know that students can’t learn when they do not feel welcomed, seen, or valued.”
Even so, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten wrote on Bluesky after the decision was announced: “Parents must have a say about their own kids. They are our partners in education.”
Weingarten also went on record this spring emphasizing the need for communities to hold “sufficient conversations” about what is considered “age-appropriate” or “controversial” material.
Teachers like Rockwell would welcome such dialogue.
“My door is always open,” she said. “I want to be able to discuss the grounds of concern and explore all sides of the conversation.”
If given the opportunity, Mikkelsen said she would try to help parents understand that reading LGBTQ+ inclusive storybooks to young children is really just a way to help increase empathy and respect—not a way to indoctrinate or change someone’s family’s religious practices.
“I can talk about Diwali [Hindu festival of lights] in my classroom. We can talk about these are the reasons why somebody might celebrate it and here’s how somebody might celebrate. And the kids in my classroom who celebrate Diwali, they’re so excited to be able to share in this,” Mikkelsen said.
“My kids in my classroom who don’t celebrate Diwali, I bet they go home and they say, ‘Hey, my friends do this cool thing. I know our family doesn’t do that cool thing.’ And then they probably move on with their lives,” Mikkelsen said. “They’re not now, all of a sudden, wanting to convert to Hinduism because they heard a story read aloud about Diwali.”
