Parental Opt-Outs for Controversial Books
Book battles come to the Supreme Court: Mahmoud v. Taylor is before the Court this week, dealing with the Montgomery County Board of Education, which took away both parental notice and opt-outs for storybooks that celebrate transgenderism and pride parades, read to children as young as three and four. The plaintiffs are a coalition of religious parents from all different faith traditions, asking the Court to rule on “whether parents’ rights to the free exercise of their faiths are burdened if public schools do not allow them to withdraw their children from classes on days” these themes are discussed, per a New York Times writeup. Oral arguments are happening now, and a decision is expected in June.
At issue are the books Pride Puppy, an alphabet book about a puppy that gets lost at a Pride parade (at which there are drag queens and leather); Love, Violet, about a girl who crushes on her female classmate; Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, which is self-explanatory; Born Ready, about a transgender child; Prince & Knight, a “modern fairy tale” about two boys falling in love and getting married after working together to battle a dragon; Intersection Allies which asks kids which pronouns fit them; and What Are Your Words? which tells kids that pronouns can “change like the weather.” (The school district has since removed two of the books from the curriculum, though they remain in school libraries.)
The lead plaintiffs are a Muslim couple—Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat—who have a son in elementary school in Montgomery County. Other plaintiffs are Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox.
It’s not just that these books are stocked in school libraries: In 2022, the school district added them to the language arts curriculum for students in pre-K through fifth grade. “At first, the Montgomery school system gave parents notice when the storybooks were to be discussed, along with the opportunity to have their children excused from those sessions,” reports the Times. “But the school system soon eliminated the advanced notice and opt-out policy, saying it was hard to administer, led to absenteeism and risked ‘exposing students who believe the storybooks represent them and their families to social stigma and isolation.'” Several justices, even the liberal ones, expressed surprise at the themes and images depicted.
The lawyer for Montgomery county is hampered by the fact that many of the justices have read the books in question.
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) April 22, 2025
“The Supreme Court will determine whether the school board policy burdens religious rights,” reports NBC News. “The justices could then determine whether that burden violates the Constitution, or they could send the case back to lower courts to make that determination.”
Some of these books, like Born Ready, are teaching kids things that…are decidedly false (even if you agree with the transgenderism stuff):
So where does this surprising assertion come from? It’s based on a moment in the book “A Boy Called Penelope”, in which a trans child’s Ghanaian grandfather accepts his gender identity, and tells him that in Twi they don’t even use gendered pronouns.
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) April 23, 2025
“Surprisingly to speakers of English and other Indo-European languages, gendering pronouns isn’t actually all that common; most languages don’t do it,” posted Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle on X. “But the idea that this somehow means sex/gender isn’t a ‘big deal’ in these cultures is Sapir-Whorfism run amok.” Children might be walking away from these lessons thinking, for example, that Ghana is some promised land for gay rights, which is decidedly not the case.
Pride Puppy, meanwhile, has a section that asks pre-schoolers (the intended audience!) to search for images from a word list that includes “intersex flag,” “drag queen,” “underwear,” and “leather.” (
Article from Reason.com
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