Religious freedom ruling raises messy questions for schools (Guest Opinion By George Theoharis)

George Theoharis, Ph.D., is a professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University. He is the author of “The School Leaders Our Children Deserve.”

As students and teachers head back to school, implementing the Supreme Court Mahmoud v. Taylor ruling from this past June is, at best, messy, and, in reality, troubling . The case centered on picture books that were part of the regular curriculum. These picture books had LGBTQ+ characters and families. The Supreme Court decided that families should be able to opt out their children from school content that does not align with their religious beliefs. The ruling indicated that merely being exposed to this content is a burden on the family’s religion because exposing students to the curriculum normalizes that same religion-confl