Six Muslim and Christian families asked Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland’s largest school district, to let their elementary-aged children skip story-time lessons featuring books that celebrate same-sex marriage and gender diversity. The district said no.
Yesterday, in the Supreme Court of the United States, justices handed down a 6-3 ruling that held that compelling those children to remain for that unit substantially burdens the parents’ well-established right to direct their children’s religious upbringing. The school may teach the material, but it must make a “reasonable accommodation.” That “reasonable” accommodation was an opt-out.
The books “do not simply refer to same-sex marriage as an existing practice. Instead, [they] present [it] as a perspective that should be celebrated … exert[ing] psychological pressure to conform,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority, stressing that the parents were not trying to micromanage the whole curriculum; they sought a narrow accommodation for a discrete assignment.
So, when (i) classroom content celebrates or endorses a viewpoint that contradicts the objecting family’s faith, and (ii) the school has no compelling reason to force attendance at that very moment, the Free Exercise Clause requires an opt-out or some comparably light accommodation. This is the key to the decision, with far-reaching ramifications for other school laws.
Interpretive Shift
Mahmoud v Taylor, the case’s designation, introduces a powerful interpretive shift. “Psychological pressure to conform” can be a constitutional injury, even in the absence of formal instruction or grading. In Stone v Graham (1980), the Court struck down Ten Commandments poster laws based on the Establishment Clause, finding no secular purpose. What Mahmoud adds is a Free Exercise layer: it recognizes that mere presence of expressive material in a school setting, especially when that material is religious, can burden a student’s religious liberty if it:
- Celebrates a worldview,
- Is unavoidable, and
- Comes from a state authority.
This reframing is critical. Ten Commandments posters, which are the subject of enacted but currently blocked mandatory posting laws in a few states, including Louisiana and Texas, where legislatures have moved to require their prominent display in every single classroom, may now be seen not just as violating church/state separation, but as a direct imposition on religious conscience, especially for students who adhere to polytheistic, non-theistic, or pluralistic beliefs.
New Standard: Narrow, Targeted Accommodation
Mahmoud stresses that parents weren’t asking to veto curriculum, but to have their own children excused when a lesson affirmatively endorses a worldview “hostile” to their faith. If this same standard is applied to the Ten Commandments laws (which have so far completely failed in federal courts), a Hindu, Wiccan, or Unitarian family may argue they do not seek to control school displays but they do object to their child being compelled to sit, learn, and be evaluated in a space where a rival religious code is posted as moral authority.
Under Mahmoud, they now have a stronger argument that the state must
- either offer an opt-out
- or remove the burden.
Since you can’t “opt out” of a classroom’s walls, this logic suggests that removal of the posters is the least restrictive means, especially since the state’s interest in posting them is weak or pretextual.
Reorganizing the 1st Amendment
The Free Exercise Clause now operates alongside, not below, the Establishment Clause. Before Mahmoud, challenges to religious content in public schools mostly relied on the Establishment Clause, requiring proof that the state was endorsing religion. Now, even if the state could pretend a secular purpose (e.g., “It’s historical!” as Louisiana tried to get away with in a recent case tried in the Fifth Circuit), Mahmoud enables plaintiffs to bypass that argument and say, “Regardless of whether this is an endorsement, you are burdening our religious exercise by creating a coercive religious environment for our children.”
That flips the burden of proof. The state must show a compelling interest and that its law is “narrowly tailored.” In other words, the state has to prove that posting religious doctrine in every classroom is essential and that no less burdensome alternative approach to displaying the posters exists. That is a near-impossible test for the state to pass in the context of the Ten Commandments.
Emphasis on Ubiquity = Escalated Burden
Mahmoud dealt with a single unit in the curriculum and held that a reasonable accommodation (opt-out) must be provided. The Ten Commandments laws mandate a permanent display in every classroom. That gives students no escape, since a child can’t “opt out” without being ejected from school. Plus, there is no plausible secular instruction that requires that display in that format.
The constant presence of a monotheistic code now appears far more coercive than the one-time storybook lesson in Mahmoud. That escalates the constitutional burden, making any accommodation short of removal untenable. That is, the least restrictive accommodation would be simply to remove the posters.
New Grounds for Lawsuits
Mahmoud revitalizes the parents’ standing to sue not as hypothetical objectors, but as protectors of a “well-established constitutional right to direct the religious upbringing of their children.” That’s important and very powerful. Under traditional Establishment Clause doctrine, plaintiffs had to prove that the government was “endorsing” a religion and that the endorsement injured them personally.
But under Mahmoud, a Free Exercise claim can stand on the imposition of a religious atmosphere, and the lack of reasonable accommodation. This makes it easier for more parents to sue and harder for the state to win on procedural grounds.
Conclusion
Mahmoud doesn’t just reaffirm religious liberty; it reconfigures the whole argument. The posting laws in several states were already doomed under Stone. But if Stone is the fire, Mahmoud is the accelerant. It converts what was once a fight about abstract state neutrality into a fight about tangible individual burden.
So long as Ten Commandments laws impose monotheistic texts on children from diverse religious backgrounds, Mahmoud will be cited as a leading authority showing that such policies aren’t just unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause but also unjustifiable under the Free Exercise Clause because they impose real, personal, and avoidable harms on religious liberty.
And that, constitutionally speaking, is a one-two punch.
