(WASHINGTON) — When public school teachers return to classrooms this fall, they will confront a new legal landscape that has given parents expanded veto power over certain aspects of a child’s education.
A sweeping constitutional interpretation issued last month from the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes a fundamental right under the First Amendment to opt-out from classroom lessons that may pose what it called a “very real threat of undermining” sincerely held religious beliefs.
It has school districts and their attorneys nationwide scrambling to review curriculum for possible conflicts and fine tune protocols for when and how students can be excused from certain material.
“It marks a significant challenge for public education nationwide,” the Montgomery County, Maryland, Board of Education, which lost the case, said in a statement on the decision.
The board had been sued by a group of Muslim, Jewish and Christian parents after it refused to permit families to opt-out their children from exposure to storybooks with LGBTQ themes.
“The right of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children would be an empty promise if it did not follow those children into the public school classroom,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion.
The ruling effectively requires schools to notify parents in advance of any classroom concepts that might be contrary to a particular religion and to accommodate requests to provide alternative instruction.
Sarah Parshall Perry, a former U.S. Department of Education attorney and current vice president of the conservative advocacy group Defending Education, called it a clear “directive” to districts.
“In making the decision, the high court expanded an earlier religious liberty in schools case, Wisconsin v. Yoder,” Perry wrote in a blog post. “In that 1972 decision, the court held that Amish families could opt their children out of compulsory education past eighth grade because continuing in school longer would be a violation of their religious beliefs.”
While religious rights advocates hailed the ruling as common sense, some civil rights groups, educators, and parents fear it now undermines the very foundation of public education.
“This decision could have a chilling effect,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest union of public school teachers, “and could lead to more educators self-censoring, shelving books and lessons, and preventing some already marginalized students from being seen and acknowledged.”
Some school officials have privately worried about a “Pandora’s box” of administrative burdens that sweeping opt-out rights now present, and said they may consider preemptively removing content from the curriculum entirely in order to avoid confrontations with parents.
“I’m sure there will be more parents that are going to exercise this right,” said Jim Walsh, a Texas lawyer who represents school boards and is a member of the National School Attorneys Association.
Federal courts have already fielded numerous disputes in recent years over religious objections to classroom lessons, including faith-based opposition to teaching women’s empowerment, the theory of evolution, coed physical education, and celebration of Halloween.
“There are religions that oppose medical science, surgery, psychiatry, interracial marriage, monogamy, woman’s suffrage, the right of gay people to marry, and so on,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., an attorney and law professor. “All of them will now be able to flood the courts with claims that particular curricular teachings and books offend their sincere values and their children should not be exposed to the offensive doctrines.”
To evaluate the claims, frontline educators could be put in a tough spot.
“School administrators will have to become experts in a wide range of religious doctrines in order to predict, in advance, whether a parent may object to a particular text, lesson plan, or school activity as contrary to their religious beliefs,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent in the case. “The result will be chaos.”
Walsh offered a more sanguine appraisal based on the experience of Texas, which has had an expansive statewide opt-out available to parents for 30 years.
“Parents can opt out of anything they have a religious or moral objection to and the school has to accommodate that. It has not caused significant problems,” Walsh said.
One reason the impact has been muted, he said, is that “kids are frequently embarrassed when their parents do this.”
As for concerns that schools might self-censor material so as to avoid conflicts with parents, Walsh said it’s a likely possibility.
“Sotomayor predicts a lot of litigation. I think she’s probably right about that, but I think if districts adopt a policy and transparency — and allow opt-out with some limitations on that — I think that’s going to go a long way for reducing that.”
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