(RNS) — A group of religious parents who sued the Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland after it refused to let them opt their children out of classes discussing books on LGBTQ+ characters will receive a $1.5 million settlement.
The agreement, approved on Feb. 19 by District Judge Deborah L. Boardman, also requires the school board to alert the parents when classes will be discussing books with LGBTQ+ themes and allow their children to skip those lessons.
The parents filed the suit in May 2023 after the school system introduced a pre-K through fifth grade English/language arts curriculum in 2022 with some LGBTQ themes and removed the option for parents to opt students out of the lessons. The curriculum had already drawn tensions among the county’s religious parents, with some worrying about appropriateness and arguing the material promoted a particular ideology.
According to the plaintiffs — Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat, who are Muslim; Jeff and Svitlana Roman, who are respectively Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox; and Melissa and Chris Park, who are Catholic — the school system decision to remove the opt-out option infringed on their religious rights.
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The case was heard last June by the Supreme Court, which ruled 6-3 in favor of the religious parents, with the three liberal justices dissenting. In his opinion, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said the board’s refusal to allow opt-outs infringed on the parents’ religious rights. The court instructed the lower court to order the bo …