A MoCo Mom's Take on Mahmoud

This latest SCOTUS decision concerns restricting LGBTQIA+ culture in the classroom, and surprisingly, the controversy is centered in my progressive county.

When my husband and I relocated from Memphis, Tennessee to Montgomery County, Maryland almost eight years ago, we weren’t thinking long term. I was moving here for a post-law school job, and this was after we had our hearts set on moving to Atlanta, Georgia where I planned to work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But a newly-imposed federal hiring freeze by Donald Trump during his first term meant that all of my CDC offers had been pulled. I was now down to one option — a Regulatory Counsel position at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at the White Oak campus in Silver Spring. We had never heard of Silver Spring (no, not even the Fleetwood Mac song), and we were excited about this new adventure but thought it would be temporary. After all, I was becoming a Presidential Management Fellow under the worst president in modern history — perhaps ever — so I was ready to get as far away from Washington, D.C. as possible.

But over the years, we grew to love our county, affectionately named “MoCo” by the locals. The diversity of our neighborhood was a huge plus, and unlike when we lived in Tennessee, we did not worry about backlash when it came to speaking freely about our political views. The educated residents stood in stark contrast to the anti-intellectualism that was steadily growing in our red home state. We didn’t get strange looks when we went out as an interracial couple. We felt safe, happy, and secure, and for the first time, we got to experience life in a “progressive bubble.” So we stayed, put down roots, and decided to have a baby. Even that experience was completely different from back home. At 29-years-old, I was an “old mom” among most of my Memphis friends, who got married and had babies younger. But in MoCo, I was the youngest in my first-time mom group, a community of women who were all embarking on motherhood in their 30s and even 40s after spending time on their degrees and careers. It was nice to not feel like the odd woman out for once.

Now, our son is 5-years-old, and he has been in the public pre-k program since he was 3-years-old. He starts kindergarten in the fall, and we are very proud to be a part of this school system. While not perfect, the education services and disability accommodations are leaps and bounds above most school systems in the U.S. When trans kids were more under attack, the Facebook mom groups were filled with supporters of trans youth and their families. When under his second presidency, Trump began human trafficking immigrants and non-white people through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), my neighborhood association shared plans of helping immigrant parents with school drop offs and pickups. The irony of being so close to the president in this Maryland suburb is that I feel the safest here compared to anywhere else in the country. The fierce fight for federal workers; the fact that Maryland is “Black AF” with a Black governor, mayor of a major city, senator, attorney general, and others in leadership; and the state legislature’s recent passing of a $25 million public health abortion grant program are clear markers of the culture of our beloved new home.

Enter Mahmoud v. Taylor.

During the 2022-23 school year, Montgomery County changed the curriculum to include more inclusive literature at all grade levels. According to the Mahmoud opinion, “Those texts included five ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks approved for students in kindergarten through fifth grade, which have story lines focused on sexuality and gender.” When parents complained, the school board allowed parents to opt their children out of class on the day those books would be taught. This was done as a reasonable accommodation for religious beliefs. But after the school board became overwhelmed with opt out requests, they rescinded this policy. So some parents sued, and this case made its way to the Supreme Court.

It was no surprise that the Court ruled in favor of the parents with the decision falling along the ideological lines of the Justices — the six conservative ones claiming to be defending the First Amendment and the three liberal Justices recognizing this as discrimination falsely dressed as a fundamental right. In Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, she correctly noted that mere exposure to a concept is not an infringement on religious liberty:

“In sum, never, in the context of public schools or elsewhere, has this Court held that mere exposure to concepts inconsistent with one’s religious beliefs could give rise to a First Amendment claim.” — Sotomayor, J.

She also made a clear distinction between “compulsion for students to declare a belief” versus being exposed to a concept that contradicts one’s belief. An example of compulsion in the public school setting is compelling students who are Jehovah’s Witnesses to salute the U.S. flag, an act which goes against their beliefs. But a teacher simply discussing saluting the flag and demonstrating the act would not violate the students’ rights to free expression. The conservative majority clearly took a hard right turn into an interpretation of the First Amendment that does not align with precedent or what the framers of the Constitution intended.

If we are to agree with the conservative majority, where do these educational opt outs end? Can children be pulled from class when talking about great women leaders like Amelia Earhart or Mae Jemison if their family follows a religion with a dogma that states women cannot lead? Can they be pulled from classrooms where Black inventors, educators, and leaders are discussed because their religion includes white supremacy beliefs? Can they be pulled from lessons about disabled people if their religion teaches that disability is a penance for a sin? Maybe this all sounds farfetched, but let’s not forget that this erasure is already happening in the form of the dismantling of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEI/DEIA).

Now, my progressive little community, a community that has been targeted harshly by this fascist regime with the cuts to our federal workforce and attacks on our immigrant citizens (see Kilmar Abrego Garcia), is dealing with being at the center of an embarrassing and hateful SCOTUS opinion. Immediately, my Facebook groups began blowing up with rants about the decision and how to continue to support an inclusive environment for our children that includes LGBTQIA+ people. The school board also issued a statement to us parents via email:

The Mahmoud decision is not logical, ethical, or Constitutional. It is just another piece of the Project 2025 playbook. And while I feel that my county is the best place for my family in this moment, this decision is a harsh reminder that even “progressive bubbles” will not be safe if we do not stop this takeover of our country and fight for the freedom that we all deserve.