America First Legal Files Amicus Brief Urging Supreme Court to Support Parents’ Rights and Reject Montgomery County Public School’s Attempt to Indoctrinate Students with Sexuality and Gender Identity Curriculum

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) and co-counsel Christopher Mills filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court of the United States urging it to review a case challenging Montgomery County Public School District’s (MCPS) mandatory curriculum on sexuality and gender identity. MCPS refuses to allow parents to opt their children out of this curriculum, violating parents’ rights.

MCPS has adopted a radical program of instruction, including:

  • Requiring teachers to use books that expose children to radical gender ideology;
  • Prohibiting parents from opting out of classroom instruction encouraging transgenderism and that the concept biological sex is a social construct;
  • Disregarding all religious objections to instruction on gender ideology.

Accordingly, the Supreme Court of the United States should review this case because:

  • As AFL notes that courts have historically deferred to public school curriculum choices on the assumption that schools, through curriculum, “inculcat[e] fundamental values necessary to the maintenance of a democratic political system.” However, this is ahistorical, as compulsory state-controlled education was not in the framers’ minds. Thus, school curriculum deserves no deference when it conflicts with constitutional rights. 
  • If deference must be given to traditional curriculum choices, it is misplaced when it comes to education about sexuality and gender identity. These topics have nothing to do with fundamental democratic values but are instead being used to create a wedge between parent and child. 
  • The assumption underpinning deference to traditional curricular choices is that school curriculum molds students’ values. Whether characterized as “inculcation” or “indoctrination,” the point is inescapable: public schooling could only matter to instilling fundamental values if it affects students’ values. 
  • In the context of elementary schooling and sexuality education, “exposure” to these topics and themes is precisely what is intended to affect students’ values. Regardless of what conversations might happen afterward, the act of authority figures reading books promoting certain values to impressionable children in a room of their peers is significant.
  • MCPS knows that school curriculum molds students’ values. That’s precisely why MCPS held that providing parents with the option to opt their children out of this curriculum would “undermin[e] [the school system’s] educational mission.” And that’s also why the district court recognized that these readings are intended to “influence” children. 

Clearly, these books are not being used to teach children how to diagram sentences. They are being used to impart values to children. 

The values on sexuality and gender identity that are being instilled in children through this mandatory public school education directly contradict their parents’ strongly held religious beliefs.

By imposing this ahistorical, ideological education imparting values on sexuality and gender identity onto impressionable young students and refusing to allow parents the ability to opt their children out, MCPS is infringing on parents’ Constitutional right to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children.

AFL remains committed to fighting for parental rights and ensuring that schools cannot force controversial values onto students in order to influence their worldview and disconnect children from their parents. Parents, not teachers or school boards, should have the final authority over the values their children are taught.

Statement from Ian Prior, America First Legal Senior Advisor:

“Schools across the country have abandoned their traditional roles of teaching students fundamental values necessary to the maintenance of a democratic political system and are now compelling students to give the verbal salute to controversial political ideologies, with no dissent allowed. Montgomery County Public Schools has been at the forefront of this push to eviscerate the constitutional rights of students and parents under the guise of ‘curriculum’ that is, in reality, nothing more than indoctrination of the state’s preferred political viewpoint. This is without a doubt one of the most consequential constitutional issues of our time, and it is important for the Supreme Court to address it,“ said Ian Prior.

Read the brief here.

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