If That deep divide was on full display Tuesday during a heated courtroom debate over whether elementary school books addressing gender and sexuality can be challenged by parents on religious grounds.
The justices split along familiar ideological lines, with a 6-3 divide emerging as they weighed whether parents should have the constitutional right to exempt their children from specific reading materials based on their faith.
Emotions ran high, and the personal weight of the case was evident in their exchanges.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett voiced empathy for parents challenging a school board policy that denies them the ability to shield their young children from LGBTQ-themed materials in the classroom.
Instead, she emphasized concerns about how such messages could shape a child’s thinking. She cited a teacher’s directive to correct a student who says a girl can only like boys: “The Board suggested the teacher respond with, ‘Actually, people of any gender can like whoever they like.’”
The ideological rift was most evident when Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor clashed over the content of Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, a storybook about a same-sex couple.
Sotomayor, who supported the 2015 ruling recognizing same-sex marriage rights, stood in contrast to Alito, who dissented and has since voiced concern that those who hold traditional religious views on homosexuality are increasingly marginalized.
On Tuesday, Alito argued that Uncle Bobby’s Wedding was more than just a depiction of same-sex marriage. “Everyone’s happy except Chloe, the little girl, who’s told by her mother that she shouldn’t feel uneasy. The story has a clear moral message.”
Sotomayor pushed back. “Wait a minute,” she interjected.
“Can I finish, please?” Alito shot back.
The case at hand, Mahmoud v. Taylor, centers on whether public schools must accommodate religious objections to classroom content—specifically, if parents can opt their children out of reading sessions that conflict with their faith.
The Montgomery County School Board has downplayed the scale of the issue, describing the material as a “handful of storybooks featuring LGBTQ characters” designed to reflect the diversity of families in the community. The board emphasized in court that teachers are prohibited from promoting or imposing personal beliefs and warned that permitting opt-outs would be “unworkably disruptive.”
He questioned its practicality with young children. “Is that a realistic expectation when you’re talking about a five-year-old?” he asked attorney Alan Schoenfeld. He suggested that children of that age are highly impressionable and may internalize a teacher’s views over their parents’ religious teachings.
“High schoolers might challenge ideas in class,” Roberts said.
Kagan warned of a slippery slope. “Once we say what you’re asking us to say,” she told Baxter, “it opens the door to opt-outs for everything.”
Sotomayor posed a hypothetical: If the court sides with the parents, what’s to stop objections to content about interfaith or interracial marriages—or even depictions of women working outside the home?
“You see women on this Court,” she noted pointedly, “in roles outside the home. So where do you draw the line?”