Parents of multiple confessions, and even children, mobilized to make their opinions heard by the School Board, with up to 1,000 people gathering for a meeting of the School Board. During one of these meetings, a boy who identified himself as Nick said that he liked to have history books that included LGBTQ characters.
“We also have rights,” he said. “We deserve to have books in our school that teach people LGBTQ and all that. That doesn’t touch you, injuring yourself physically … I don’t know why you hate it so much. “
Tuesday, at the Supreme Court, parents opposing the books are two important points. Firstly, that the Supreme Court has long judged that parents are responsible for guiding the values of their children, and secondly, that forcing these books on their children in public school is a violation of the guarantee of the constitution to the free exercise of religion.
Like Morrison, the young mother’s mother, said: “It’s just very heartbreaking for me how many parents feel like choosing between educating their child and raising their children in their faith.”
Although she has left her job as oral surgeon for the home school her daughter, she notes that many parents cannot do this and cannot afford a private school.
Eric Baxter, a lawyer for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty who represents the objective parents of the Supreme Court on Tuesday, will tell the judges that schools authorized decades for religious reasons.
“Most people believe that their children should have some time when they don’t have to face these kinds of heavier subjects,” he said. “It goes to the very identity of their children, how they will train families, will have children. The things most people think are among the most important decisions you will make in your life. ”
So how should school districts draw the line? Should parents be able to opt for their children from a science class when there is a discussion on Darwin’s theory of evolution? Should they be able to withdraw from a history course which includes a section on the women’s movement and the struggle for equality on the labor market? Some religions oppose these two things.
Addressing the question of the teaching of evolution, Baxter answers: “What if a child wants to withdraw from the dissection of the frogs during biology? Many states really have laws that allow this kind of deactivation. ”
The position of the school board
These decisions concerning the program of public studies have been traditionally left to local school boards, observes the law professor of Yale Justin Driver, author of The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court and the Battle for the American Spirit. He and Stanford’s law professor, Emeritus Eugene Volokh, who wrote a lot about the first amendment, filed a friend of the Court, defending himself with the School Board in this case. For the most part, they say that the courts have been reported to local school boards unless there are evidence that students are forced to accept an underlying religious belief.
The two researchers argue that there is no proof of coercion here. On the contrary, as the driver says, “it seems to me that … the process works (is) as it should. People have raised objections, the school district heard these objections and modified their practice. ”
This is not a case of children forced to religious beliefs, he says. These are some parents who wish to prevent their children from being exposed to a wide variety of ideas in class, including a book, for example, in which a child attends his uncle’s marriage to another man.
“Public school is supposed to be for a large group and some people will express doubts about the decisions of the curriculum,” says the driver. “But it was not the tradition of the Court to allow these people to wear the day. … In a large country religiously diversified like the United States, local public schools were not required to afford these schools for implementing public schools.”
Indeed, because school councils reflect the opinions of their voters, there are places, such as San Francisco, where certain books with LBGTQ + themes are necessary in the program.
“It is important to appreciate who is the right entity to make curricula,” adds Driver. “Is it the public school or are they federal judges?”
That said, the chances of the Supreme Court who use this case to demand a kind of opt-out for religious objectors are quite high. The current court, dominated by very conservative judges, three of which are named Trump, has become more and more concentrated on the guarantee of separation of the constitution between the Church and the State, but on the guarantee of the first amendment to the free exercise of religion.
