Amid all the headlines of the summer, it was easy to miss a bit of encouraging news. In June, the Supreme Court delivered two important victories for family values. Both rulings cover sensitive issues, and they handle the heavily contested topics with careful reasoning. I am optimistic that these decisions will constructively shape public debate in the coming years.
Keeping Parents Central in Education
One case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, was a victory for parents’ rights. A group of Muslim and Christian parents were compelled to bring a suit against their children’s Maryland county school board after it had refused to accommodate their religious beliefs.
The school board had directed elementary school teachers to teach using books that included LGBTQ themes. One book, called Pride Puppy, tells the story of a puppy who wanders through the crowd of onlookers and participants during a Pride parade. In another, a girl goes to her uncle’s same-sex wedding. The officials did not simply place books like these into the classroom. They suggested that the books be read aloud five times a school year.
Since the stories conflict with the religious views of the parents, they responded with two simple requests. They asked the school to notify parents when one of these books would be used and to excuse their children from that lesson. Schools frequently follow this pattern when delicate subjects are discussed in health class. The school board refused.
In a win for common sense, the court sided with the parents. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito explained that the parents’ request was quite reasonable. They did not hope “to micromanage the public school curriculum.” Instead, they simply wished to excuse their children from those lessons—allowing the parents to rear their children according to the principles of their faiths, as the First Amendment intended.
Protecting Minors from Irreversible Treatments
In a second case, United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court upheld another reasonable idea. Three Tennessee teenagers, their parents, and a physician brought the case, and the Biden administration took their side in the December 2024 argument. The parties challenged a Tennessee law that prevents children from taking puberty blockers and hormone therapies to alter their gender. Roughly two dozen states have similar laws. The families contended that since transgender hormone treatments have to do with gender, banning them would amount to sex-based discrimination. If true, this would have been a violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
The justices did not agree. The Tennessee law bans treatment based on age, not gender. The Supreme Court found that it is well within Tennessee’s right to say that children are too young to be using these medical treatments. The state regularly sets age-related rules, such as for alcohol and tobacco use, driver’s licenses, and voting.
