Justice Sonia Sotomayor denounced the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc for siding with parents who demanded they be allowed to opt their children out of reading LGBT-inclusive books at school.
Sotomayor, 71, said Friday’s ruling will invite “chaos” at schools across the country, as perennially underfunded districts—and their already stretched-thin teachers—now must spend significant time alerting parents to potential conflicts with their religion.
“Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools,” she said.
The court ruled 6-3 in favor of parents who argued their Maryland school district placed “an unconstitutional burden” on their right to the free exercise of religion by having storybooks in the curriculum that had LGBT references or themes. The Trump administration publicly backed the parents, who sought opt-out privileges in public schools beyond just sex education.
The five books in question included one titled Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, which is about a girl who learns that her favorite uncle is marrying another man. The book was described as being “hostile” to some parents’ religious beliefs.
Sotomayor noted the storybooks in question “introduce readers to LGBTQ characters, but they draw on many of the themes common to children’s books.” She was joined in dissent by justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The liberal justice, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009, characterized the court’s decision as a step back for the United States as a nation of diverse people and backgrounds.
Sotomayor said public schools “offer to children of all faiths and backgrounds an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society.”
“That experience is critical to our Nation’s civic vitality,” she added. “Yet it will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs.
Sotomayor said Friday’s ruling ushers in a “new reality” for American public schools.
“Casting aside longstanding precedent, the Court invents a constitutional right to avoid exposure to ‘subtle’ themes ‘contrary to the religious principles’ that parents wish to instill in their children,” she wrote. “Exposing students to the ‘message’ that LGBTQ people exist, and that their loved ones may celebrate their marriages and life events, the majority says, is enough to trigger the most demanding form of judicial scrutiny.”
Sotomayor said she worries that key curriculum may be cut from schools to avoid seeking permission from parents.
“Given the great diversity of religious beliefs in this country, countless interactions that occur every day in public schools might expose children to messages that conflict with a parent’s religious beliefs,” she said. “If that is sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny, then little is not.”
She added, “The harm will not be borne by educators alone: Children will suffer too. Classroom disruptions and absences may well inflict long-lasting harm on students’ learning and development.”
Sotomayor said she foresees “chilling effects” stemming from the ruling, which will impact schools not just in Montgomery County, Maryland, but nationwide.
“Many school districts, and particularly the most resource-strapped, cannot afford to engage in costly litigation over opt-out rights or to divert resources to tracking and managing student absences,” she said in closing. “Schools may instead censor their curricula, stripping material that risks generating religious objections. The Court’s ruling, in effect, thus hands a subset of parents the right to veto curricular choices long left to locally elected school boards. Because I cannot countenance the Court’s contortion of our precedent and the untold harms that will follow, I dissent.”
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