SIDEBAR: The Disappearing Middle
Mahmoud v. Taylor and the quiet collapse of pluralism
SIDEBAR is my occasional op-ed series on unfolding constitutional controversies. These pieces step outside the usual analysis to weigh in on the news of the moment.
In the national debate over LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools, it’s easy to assume only two camps exist: those who want to erase queer identities from public life, and those who want them fully embraced in every public institution. But Mahmoud v. Taylor, decided today by the Supreme Court, disrupts that binary. Rather than framing the case as a victory for one side in the culture wars, the Court’s opinion zeroes in on something more subtle: the state’s duty to accommodate conscience when it takes on the role of moral educator.
The case arose from a policy adopted by Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Maryland, which introduced a series of LGBTQ+-inclusive storybooks into its elementary language arts curriculum. These books are gentle in tone but unambiguous in message: same-sex marriage is joyful, gender identity is self-defined, and societal norms that suggest otherwise are not just mistaken but harmful. Originally, MCPS allowed religious parents to opt their children out. Then, in March 2023, the district reversed itself—declaring that no opt-outs would be permitted, even for families whose faith traditions affirm different moral understandings.
Parents from a wide range of religious backgrounds—Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox Christian, and more—challenged that decision. Their concern wasn’t just about content, but about the absence of any way to respectfully dissent.
Lower courts dismissed their claims. But in a 6–3 ruling, the Supreme Court reversed, anchoring its decision in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), where the Court had protected the right of Amish parents to withdraw their children from formal schooling past eighth grade. There, as here, the state’s educational goals were weighed against the deep, identity-shaping commitments of religious families. And there, as here, the Court concluded that the state's interest—important as it may be—was not absolute.
What tipped the scale? Not the existence of LGBTQ+ stories, but their presentation. The curriculum didn’t merely expose students to diversity—it trained them to affirm one vision of identity as right and others as wrong. Internal guidance from MCPS instructed teachers to challenge students who disagreed. If a child echoed their parents’ belief that boys can’t marry boys, the teacher was to correct them: “Two men who love each other can decide they want to get married.” A child questioning a character’s gender identity might be told their comment was “hurtful,” or even bigoted.
In other words, these weren’t neutral narratives—they were moral lessons, reinforced by adult authority figures, delivered to students as young as five. And when those lessons contradicted core tenets of a student’s faith, families had no option but compliance. The state had removed not only the possibility of opting out, but the very idea that a principled objection could exist.
That’s where the Court drew the line. It declined to say that schools can’t teach inclusive values. But it insisted that inclusion must leave room for divergence. Justice Alito, writing for the majority, emphasized that not every exposure to disfavored ideas amounts to a constitutional injury. What matters is whether the state creates real pressure to conform—and whether it does so without offering a procedural release valve. That’s what made the MCPS policy constitutionally infirm: not the stories themselves, but the refusal to recognize pluralism in how those stories would be received.
Critics worry this ruling will usher in a wave of religious opt-outs—fracturing public education and enabling parents to exempt their children from lessons on everything from evolution to civil rights. The Court’s majority disagreed. It framed Mahmoud not as an all-access pass to curricular avoidance, but as a case about institutional rigidity. It signaled that accommodation is not always required—but when schools fuse moral messaging with mandatory participation, procedural safeguards matter.
This is more than a legal ruling—it’s a civic signal. Pluralism cannot survive on celebration alone. It requires mechanisms of dissent. That means honoring the reality that parents come to public schools with divergent beliefs—and that democratic education must make room for those differences, not flatten them.
Opt-out policies are not tools of exclusion. They are a way to ensure inclusion doesn’t harden into compulsion. When managed carefully and transparently, they allow schools to meet constitutional obligations without sacrificing their mission to create affirming environments. The hard work lies in striking that balance—but abandoning the effort altogether, as MCPS did, isn’t neutrality. It’s coercion.
What Mahmoud makes clear is that true inclusion in public education isn’t just about whose stories get told. It’s about whether families have any choice in how their children engage with those stories—and whether the state is willing to accommodate that choice in good faith. The constitutional answer, at least for now, is yes.