AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Public school students in Montgomery County, Maryland, do not have to stay in the classroom when books like "Uncle Bobby's Wedding" and "Prince & Knight" are being read. That's because the Supreme Court ruled today that parents have the right to remove their children from classrooms when lessons relying on books with LGBTQ+ characters are used. The 6-to-3 majority says school officials in Montgomery County have to allow parents to opt their kids out of coursework that goes against their religious beliefs. For help understanding this case, we're joined now by Jeffrey Fisher. He teaches constitutional law and Supreme Court practice at Stanford Law School. Welcome.
JEFFREY FISHER: Thank you very much.
CHANG: So before we get into the specifics of this ruling, can you just lay out in general terms what rights the law generally provides to parents who object to what their kids are being taught at school? - because can't parents already opt out of certain courses like sex education for religious reasons?
FISHER: Yes, that's true as a matter of practice, but what today the court waded into is, what if a school district does not give that opportunity to parents as a matter of just their own policy choice? So in other words, if the school district determines that a certain lesson is important enough to require students to be in the classroom, whether it be the kind of things we're talking about today or some sort of science or math curriculum, do opt-out requirements kick in when the content butts up against religious beliefs?
CHANG: OK, then how does the majority in this case - concerning LGBTQ-themed books - how does the majority elaborate on that law that you just laid out when it comes to opt-out rights?
FISHER: Well, what the court does is it starts from the premise that parents have an important First Amendment right of free exercise of religion not just for themselves, but in terms of caring for their own children. And what the court decided today was if a particular lesson is going to substantially interfere with the religious development of children from their parents' perspective, the school district needs to give the parents an opportunity to opt their children out of that lesson.
CHANG: So advance notice is required. 'Cause I'm just trying to imagine how this would work in real life - like, if a student opens a book in a classroom in Montgomery County, Maryland, and realizes right then and there the book mentions two gay boys who have a crush on each other, how does a parent invoke an opt-out in that moment?
FISHER: I think you've put your finger on one of the tricky parts here, is that you can't always predict in advance when there's going to be a religious objection. And that may be one of the implications of today's decision, is that it's going to require school administrators to take a harder look at lesson plans and the like. And I do want to clarify one thing, which is I don't know that this court decision today applies to a child his or herself simply pulling a book off the shelf as much as it does to lessons taught out loud in a classroom by a teacher.
CHANG: Right.
FISHER: I think that's what the court's particularly concerned with. And I think maybe a fair way to understand the decision is it puts a responsibility, starting today, on schools and individual teachers to know in advance what they're going to say or assign and be responsible to give the appropriate notice as the court directed today.
CHANG: OK. Well, today's ruling is not a final decision on this case. Can you just explain what happens at this point?
FISHER: Well, for this particular case, what the court said is the plaintiffs - the parents - have a probability of success in their lawsuit. And the reasoning of the majority decision suggests that the school district does in fact have to provide notices for these particular books and others like it. I think there's two real big questions as we go forward. One is, is this ruling limited to just particularly young children, say in elementary school?
CHANG: Right.
FISHER: And is it going to have the same kind of effect where children get older and have more of, you might say, a mind of their own? Secondly, is this ruling going to be limited to books with LGBTQ themes or other content that - you know, as you started by saying, things that have to do with sex education and sex and morality can tend to be particularly combustible in certain religious traditions.
CHANG: Yeah. Can you imagine other types of public school lessons getting challenged because of this ruling today?
FISHER: You can 100% imagine it. So just take maybe one of our country's most storied debates of creationism versus evolution. You know, does science class now have to give opt-out notices when they're going to teach evolution? And so that's a big question going forward that the majority writes in a way - as the court often does - not taking a position one way or the other. It writes in somewhat broad strokes. But on the other hand, the case has particular facts in a particular place in time that the court could decide were determinative in a future case. So all these future objections that, no doubt, school districts are going to receive - from everything from science to history, English class and whatever the novel of the season would be assigned - are now going to be sorted out by the lower courts, and we've no doubt not heard the last of this debate.
CHANG: Indeed. That is Jeffrey Fisher, a co-director of the Supreme Court litigation clinic at Stanford Law School. Thanks so much for joining us.
FISHER: My pleasure. Thank you very much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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