E&W Blog

In June, the Supreme Court upheld longstanding precedent and protected parents’ ability to ensure their children’s education aligns with their faith through the court case Mahmoud v. Taylor. The case centered on Montgomery County Public Schools’ decision to introduce topics such as transgender identity and same-sex marriage to students as early as kindergarten.

Today, the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education held a hearing to examine whether school districts across the country are defying this court ruling and keeping parents in the dark about controversial school materials.

Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Kiley (R-CA) started the hearing by emphasizing how legal precedent has repeatedly protected parents and students from engaging in activities that contradict a family’s sincerely held religious beliefs. “These are common-sense principles. Religious freedom is a cornerstone of American life, and parents do not surrender it for their children when they enroll in public school,” he said. 

In an exchange with Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI), Ms. Sarah Parshall Perry, Vice President and Legal Fellow at Defending Education, highlighted our nation’s history of protecting the parent-child relationship. “It is something on which the Supreme Court first weighed in on in 1923…recognizing that this was a right that simply had to be found somewhere in the Constitution because we knew it had always existed from time immemorial,” she said.  

Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) pushed back on critics who say that parents should’ve participated in the democratic process and made their voices heard at meetings rather than resorting to lawsuits against school districts. “Parents did engage in the democratic process and were called bigots, racists, and xenophobes—this was a very diverse group of Americans of all religions and political stripes who simply wanted to protect their children’s education,” Mr. Eric Baxter, Vice President and Senior Counsel at The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said.                              

Rep. Mark Harris (R-NC) asked Mr. Donald Daugherty, Senior Litigation Counsel at the Defense of Freedom Institute, about remarks made by the Montgomery County School Board prior to the lawsuit, including an instance in which a board member compared parents who objected to controversial curriculum to white supremacists. “One of the things [Mahmoud v. Taylor] revealed was how disconnected public schools are from the students, parents, and families that they serve…making this comparison just shows how out of touch they were,” said. Mr. Daugherty.

Rep. Mike Rulli (R-OH) put it best. “I don’t know what kind of upside-down world we’re living in where it’s okay to teach sexual orientated material to kids under 18,” he said. 

A big reason our nation is at this inflection point is because teachers are choosing activism over fundamentals like reading and writing. 

Bottom line: Families don’t lose their constitutional right to religious liberty when they enter the schoolhouse door. Republicans remain committed to protecting parental rights in and out of the classroom.