"Defending Faith and Families Against Government Overreach: Mahmoud v. Taylor"

...public schools, which introduced curriculum promoting gender ideology for children as young as kindergarten during the 2022-2023 school year. If a student dared to even question the content of these lessons, the district coached teachers to chastise students and repeat the same line: "That comment is hurtful." These teachings conflict with the sincerely held beliefs of many parents who are concerned about the rise of classroom content that is not age-appropriate for young children. A group of parents from many faiths, including Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox families, asked the Montgomery district for advance notice of days on which these concepts would be taught so they could opt their students out. The parents did not ask to dictate curriculum nor forbid other families from participating in these lessons. They merely wanted the opportunity to keep their kids home for a day in accordance with their beliefs. The district said no. The case went to the Supreme Court. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the court granted a preliminary injunction on the grounds that the parents' right to opt out of the district's gender and sexuality teachings was protected under the Free Exercise Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The court held that, quote, "A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses a very real threat of undermining the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill." The court concluded that, quote, "For many people of faith, there are few religious acts more important than the religious education of their children, thereby receiving a generous measure of constitutional protection." These are common sense principles. Religious freedom is a cornerstone of American life, and parents do not surrender it for their children when they enroll them in public school. Unfortunately, we'll hear testimony today that some districts are trying to circumvent or even defy the court's holding in Mahmoud. The state of California is attempting to minimize the scope of Mahmoud by giving local districts vast discretion over how and when opt-outs are allowed. Seattle Public Schools have gone even further by banning parental opt-outs from certain classes. These reports are gravely concerning to this committee. For the past century, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing, health, and education of their children, including faith. As recently as 2000, the court called it perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized. Today's hearing will examine the Mahmoud case, the state of parental rights in America, and whether districts are complying with the law. In a world where new and controversial types of content are finding their way into classrooms, it is essential that parents maintain control over their child's education. The committee stands on the side of parents, students, and the Constitution. With that, I yield to the ranking member for an opening statement.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today. Public K-12 schools across the country are right now facing a deluge of crises that affect the safety, security, and academic future of students. According to Sandy Hook Promise, nearly 400,000 children have experienced gun violence at school since the turn of the century, and that's far more than any other developed country. Some kids go to school with built-in bullet shields in their backpacks, and parents live in fear that their child might not come home. Children across the country are also experiencing trauma at the hands of their own government. As ICE rips families apart and preys on people near schools and hospitals, right now educators are asking me what to do when ICE agents appear on their school grounds. They're sharing stories of children distracted by fear, families afraid to ask for help, and staff struggling to support students who are carrying adult-sized burdens into the classroom. One superintendent told me about a first-grade classroom where every student had a story about being afraid of ICE. These stories are heartbreaking, and they demand our attention and action. And as our communities are experiencing this overwhelming fear, Donald Trump and Secretary McMahon continue to illegally dismantle the Department of Education. Students who experience discrimination are left without recourse as Secretary McMahon has implemented a mass reduction in force that essentially emptied the Office of Civil Rights. And a new GAO report confirmed that the agency has dismissed 90 percent of the discrimination cases that have been filed. Add to that post-pandemic loneliness, device addiction, gun violence, and social media addiction. It paints an alarming picture for both K-12 education and the overall well-being of our nation's children. This committee, and especially this subcommittee, has a responsibility to help children thrive regardless of their neighborhood, their family income, or according to the United States Supreme Court in 1982, immigration status. But instead of addressing these many real dangers to students, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are once again turning classrooms into an epicenter of culture wars to the detriment of students and families. No one is arguing that parents should not be involved in their children's education. I know that firsthand because I was an active parent volunteer for years and know firsthand that family involvement is critical to a child's development and educational success. We all agree on that. But unfortunately, instead of focusing on community schools or other support that would help students succeed, today's hearing will further perpetuate a culture of fear and censorship. Instead of having a meaningful discussion about how to improve education or conducting oversight on what's left of the Trump administration's Department of Education, Republicans are using parental rights as another means to undermine public education. Students deserve to learn all of the nuance and intricacies of the world around them in an age-appropriate manner. Preventing students in public schools from learning certain material based on the religious objections of a vocal minority sets a dangerous precedent. Further, it increases the administrative burden on already resource-strapped schools and educators who fear retribution for teaching about topics that some might think is controversial: world religions, classic literature, African American history, evolution, climate science, and the history of the LGBTQ community. Inclusion is not indoctrination. Differences exist in the world around us, and part of a good education includes teaching students about tolerance and understanding. Banning books or preventing students from learning about differences serves to perpetuate a culture of hatred and fear. I do want to note some hypocrisy here. Countless times in this committee, my colleagues have said they want to give education back to the states. I've heard that numerous times over the years, and for the most part, they're talking about curriculum. As we have repeated again and again in this committee, the federal government is not in charge of curriculum or what books are in schools. If parents don't like books or curriculum, they can go to the school board and ask for a change. And if they don't like the school board's decision, they can elect a new school board. That's the kind of local control I thought my colleagues wanted. My Democratic colleagues and I are committed to fighting against politicizing education. We will continue to work with students, parents, educators, and communities until every student receives an accurate and high-quality education in a safe, well-funded environment without fear of gun violence or masked federal agents breaking down the classroom door. I look forward to the conversation, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time.

Pursuant to committee rule 8C, all members who wish to insert written statements into the record may do so by submitting them to the committee clerk electronically in Microsoft Word format by 5:00 PM 14 days after this hearing. And without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 14 days to allow such statements and other extraneous material noted during the hearing to be submitted for the official hearing record. I will now introduce our witnesses. Our first witness is Mr. Eric Baxter, the Vice President and Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty from Washington, D.C. Our second witness is Donald Daugherty, a Senior Litigation Counsel for Defense of Freedom Institute from River Hills, Wisconsin. Our third witness is Mr. Zalman Rothschild, an Assistant Professor of Law at Yeshiva University, Cardozo School of Law from New York City. And our fourth witness is Ms. Sarah Parshall Perry, a Vice President and Legal Fellow at Defending Education from Arlington, Virginia. We thank our witnesses for being here today and we look forward to your testimony. Pursuant to committee rules, I would ask that each limit your oral presentation to a three-minute summary of your written statement. As committee members have many questions for you, the clock will count down from three minutes. However, pursuant to committee rule 8D and committee practice, we will not cut off your testimony until you reach the five-minute mark. I would also like to remind the witnesses to be aware of your responsibility to provide accurate information to the subcommittee. I will first recognize Mr. Baxter for your testimony.

Good morning, Chair Kiley, Ranking Member Bonamici, and distinguished committee members. I'm Eric Baxter from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in Mahmoud v. Taylor. Mahmoud is the Supreme Court's most significant parental rights case in half a century. It affirms parents' right to opt their children out of public school instruction that violates their religious belief, but it also signals a move to strengthen religious liberty more broadly. The case arose after the Montgomery County, Maryland school board introduced LGBTQ storybooks with the stated goal of disrupting students' thinking about gender and sexuality. The curriculum introduces children as young as three to pride parades, playground romance, and gender transitions. Teachers are instructed to emphasize that doctors only guessed at students' sex at their birth and to frame contrary views as unfair and hurtful. The curriculum was immediately controversial. Even the elementary school principals' union warned it was age-inappropriate, factually dubious, and dismissive of religious beliefs. Parents were first told they could opt their kids out, but the board soon reversed, saying they could not even be notified when the books were read. At a board meeting, over a thousand parents, largely Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodox, expressed concern. The board responded by comparing them to xenophobes and white supremacists. The parents sued, seeking not to remove the curriculum, but simply to restore the opt-outs. After two lower courts rejected the parents' claims, the Supreme Court in a 6-3 ruling reversed. It said the curriculum was unmistakably designed to impose values hostile to many faiths and that it exerted psychological pressure on young children to conform. The court concluded that parents' right to direct the religious upbringing of their children would be an empty promise if it did not extend into the classroom. This ruling has enormous significance. Schools nationwide must now adopt policies to accommodate students' religious beliefs or risk financial exposure for themselves and their employees. The ruling also calls into question the widespread school policies that support gender transitioning behind parents' backs. Any effort to undermine parents on such religiously sensitive matters cannot be squared with Mahmoud. Beyond this immediate impact, Mahmoud also bypassed Employment Division v. Smith, an earlier Supreme Court ruling that significantly limited free exercise protections. That move undermined Smith's continued viability. If the parents here get to bypass Smith, why should teachers challenging the same policy have to satisfy its higher standards? And if not teachers, why anyone else defending their own religious liberty? In this sense, Mahmoud portends Smith's demise, which will strengthen religious liberty for all. Thank you for shining a light today on this remarkable Supreme Court opinion.

Thank you very much. I'll next recognize Mr. Daugherty for your testimony.

Chairman Kiley and Ranking Member Bonamici, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Don Daugherty, and I'm Senior Litigation Counsel for the Defense of Freedom Institute. In my time, I'm going to focus on the implications of Mahmoud v. Taylor going forward. Parents of faith will be able to use Mahmoud to push back against overreach by public schools, and the case should lead to more curriculum transparency. For example, now in Montgomery County, each semester students receive refrigerator magnets detailing the upcoming curriculum, including books to be read, so that their parents can decide whether they want to opt out or not. Also, another case in late December in Massachusetts, a federal court there relied on Mahmoud to enjoin Lexington Public Schools when the schools refused to allow parents to opt their five-year-old out of LGBTQ-themed books that violated the family's Christian faith. So that's just a very recent case. At the same time, Mahmoud is not a license for parents to micromanage the curriculum, and courts will need to define more clearly what this free exercise parental right encompasses. Some parents in Mahmoud objected to the storybook series on purely secular grounds, and the Supreme Court has recognized that under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, that is apart from the Free Exercise Clause of the 1st Amendment, parents have a substantive right to direct the upbringing and education of their children generally, not just in matters of religion. Guidance from the federal courts will be needed on this issue as well going forward. Finally, a mystery surrounding Mahmoud is what critical principle was the Montgomery County Board of Education trying to vindicate by defending its no-opt-out policy all the way to the Supreme Court? Many people wondered about this. In addition to Montgomery County families, many Montgomery County principals and teachers in public schools questioned the use of the storybook series. Before the case was decided, the Washington Post and the New York Times criticized the board's decision to force parents to go to court, and the board expended considerable taxpayer dollars fighting those parents when they could have easily reached, I believe, an out-of-court settlement. During oral argument at the Supreme Court, Justice Kavanaugh, who pointed out that he is a lifelong resident of Montgomery County, he stated that he was a bit mystified how it came to this, noting that Maryland was founded on religious liberty and expressing surprise that the board had decided that this is the hill we're going to die on. Justice Alito similarly asked the board's attorney, "What's the big deal about allowing parents to opt their children out?" And even Justice Elena Kagan, who ultimately dissented, said she suspected that there were a lot of non-religious parents who weren't all that thrilled about this. Although no one can read the board's mind as to what they hoped to achieve through this case, at the least Mahmoud did reveal how disconnected some public schools have become from the families that they serve. The 1st Amendment and the Bill of Rights generally exist to protect individual rights from a tyranny of the majority. As public schools more and more encroach on aspects of a children's upbringing beyond the core curriculum, the importance of constitutional bulwarks only increases. In Mahmoud, the Supreme Court wisely reinforced the free exercise bulwark. At the same time, parents cannot allow themselves to be treated like a captive audience by their elected representatives. Mahmoud shows that parents can and must take back their children's public schools and that the 1st Amendment is one way to assist them in doing so. Thank you.

Thanks very much. I'll next recognize Mr. Rothschild for your testimony.

Chairman Kiley, Ranking Member Bonamici, and members of the committee, my name is Zalman Rothschild. I am an Assistant Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law. I'm also an ordained rabbi and have a PhD in Jewish studies. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. This hearing concerns an issue that has generated intense public attention. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court held that religious parents have a constitutional right to remove their children from public school instruction that conflicts with the religious values they seek to instill. The decision has been celebrated by many religious liberty advocates and by broader parental rights movements, as it is being celebrated this very morning. That celebration is misplaced. To understand why, it is necessary to situate Mahmoud within a longer constitutional tradition, one that has governed for nearly a century. That tradition did not deny the importance of parental authority or religious liberty, but it recognized the need for limiting principles. Mahmoud departs from that tradition even as it presents itself as continuing it. I want to highlight just two decisions from that tradition: Barnette, decided in 1943, and Yoder, decided in 1972. Both are often invoked as victories for parental and religious rights in education; both were far more limited. In Barnette, the court held that public schools could not compel Jehovah's Witness children or any children to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Barnette drew a line between compelled affirmation and mere instruction. Schools could teach contested ideas; they just could not require students to profess them. Second, the court went out of its way to clarify that, quote, "The issue as we see it does not turn on one's possession of particular religious views or the sincerity with which they are held." Religion supplied the plaintiffs' motive, but the constitutional violation was compelled speech, not religious burden. This distinction mattered immensely. Because the injury was compelled speech, the remedy was to invalidate the policy across the board. Barnette did not create a system of individualized opt-outs. Yoder was also limited. It exempted Amish parents from compulsory high school attendance, but only because enforcement threatened a cohesive religious community's very survival. The court stressed the collective nature of the risk. Compulsory schooling carried, quote, "a very real threat of undermining the Amish community and religious practice as they exist today," end quote. The best reading of Yoder is that it reflected a pluralistic compromise. It protected a community's mechanism of cultural and religious transmission while still expressing concern about children's later ability to exit that community. It was not a general endorsement of parental opt-outs from public school instruction. For 80 years, courts uniformly applied these distinctions. Parents could choose either public or private education, students could not be compelled to affirm beliefs, and religious communities could, in rare circumstances involving threats to their survival, obtain narrow exemptions from high school compulsory education laws. But parents had no general right to opt out of public school curriculum simply because it conflicted with their values. This consensus, it should be noted, was not invented by progressive courts. It emerged from decisions often associated with constitutional conservatism. Parental rights and religious liberty are part of America's constitutional history, and for good reason. But that tradition also embodies hard-earned judgments about how those values must coexist with others, including child welfare, public education, and public health. Barnette and Yoder represent the best of our constitutional tradition: a careful balance among parental liberty, state authority, and children's welfare. They reflect wisdom about how to sustain religious pluralism without eviscerating public institutions. Mahmoud upends that settlement while pretending to preserve it. The celebration of Mahmoud by religious liberty and parental rights advocates may prove short-lived once the decision's logic is deployed by parents across the ideological spectrum and once states lose the ability to ensure that all children receive basic education, healthcare, and protection. There is a reason the constitutional consensus held for nearly a century. The court seems to now be dismantling it without fully grappling with the wisdom it embodied or the problems its destruction may create. This deserves more careful consideration than it has received. Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

Thank you very much. I'll lastly recognize Ms. Parshall Perry for your testimony.

Chairman Kiley, Ranking Member Bonamici, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, good morning. As a legal scholar, a policy analyst, and a mother, the issue we're here today to discuss is near to my heart, and I commend the committee for holding this hearing. Mahmoud wasn't simply an extraordinary case because of its well-reasoned holding and sound jurisprudence. It was extraordinary insofar as the petitioners' challenges were necessary at all. That their years-long effort to opt their children out of questionable material pursuant to their free exercise rights even required the Supreme Court's deliberation is a grave condemnation on the state of American education writ large. Rather than orienting public classrooms toward the urgent task of reversing the nation's flagging NAEP scores, indicating that only 22 percent of our high school seniors are numerate and only 35 percent are literate, most schools seem content instead to educate for activism, social justice, and queer propaganda. Consider a few of our unearthed examples. In Lexington, Massachusetts, kindergarten students are subjected to DEI curriculum that includes instruction on changing their bodies to fit their gender identity. In South Burlington, Vermont, the elementary school curriculum directs students to become active anti-racists with resources from the groups Reading is Resistance and Woke Kindergarten. In Los Angeles, California, they offer a queer all-year school calendar providing teachers and students with new LGBTQ resources every month, like Reading the Rainbow: A Guide to Literacy Through a Queer Lens. Wauwatosa, Wisconsin public schools have instituted sex ed curriculum that teaches children as young as five about gender identity and eliminates the word men and women from the kindergarten lexicon. In Seattle, Washington, teachers are instructed to hide students' gender identity from their parents, making it more than 1,200 school districts now that we've identified with similar deceptive policies. Post-Mahmoud, it also refuses to allow opt-outs from queer-themed curriculum for religious parents and has solicited supplies for a community health locker project including chest binders, nipple guards, and tuck-friendly underwear. Our organization has tracked thousands of incidents like these. They evidence the astonishing misconception under which many American schools operate: that the child is the mere creature of the state. But the Supreme Court, however, has held precisely the opposite more than 100 years ago in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, when it struck down Oregon's compulsory public education law. 20 years later, it reinforced Pierce in Prince v. Massachusetts, holding that the custody, care, and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state cannot supply or hinder. Yet again in Wisconsin v. Yoder, the court hewed closely to precedent determining that a parent's interest in the free exercise of religion outweighed the state's interest in compelling school attendance beyond eighth grade. Mahmoud was the capstone in the court's parental rights and religious liberty canon, reinforcing the pre-political, natural, and ancient right of a parent to direct their child's upbringing. But the statist notion that children belong to all of us, that schools, not parents, know better, is both intractable and persistent. Despite Mahmoud's unequivocal edict then, the battle for parental primacy is only just beginning. Thank you, and I welcome your questions.

Thank you very much to all of our witnesses. Under committee rule 9, we will now question the witnesses under the five-minute rule, and I'll first recognize the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Walberg, for five minutes.

Thank you for your kindness on that, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the witnesses for being here. As a parent who gave life to three children and as a grandparent who saw my kids give life to seven grandchildren, I appreciate the fact that we're talking about this issue because frankly, it involves the very survival of the family itself and the primacy of parental responsibility, let alone rights. Not one school board member gave life to my three kids. And in a time when we are about to see a rapid increase of lawsuits coming from transgendered young people who have finally seen they were lied to, I'm hoping that Montgomery County schools will receive significant lawsuits in the process. We need to remember as well that parents can't opt out of paying local public school taxes. That's the difference, Mr. Rothschild, that we're talking about here. They can't opt out of paying for something that they disagree with strongly. Though they can leave the schools, they still pay the taxes. Mr. Baxter, thank you for your work at the Supreme Court to defend parents. You are doing the Lord's work, truly the designer's work. It's been over six months since Mahmoud was decided. Have states been adjusting their policies to align with the court's decision in Mahmoud, or are states looking for ways to work around the court's decision?

[Microphone.] I think it's important to remember that school boards across the country have long had opt-out policies, including Montgomery County itself. It was only when this particular curriculum was introduced that the board withdrew the opt-outs. And so when Mr. Rothschild asks where will this all go, we're really—this was an extreme outlier situation where the—and there are other schools doing this, pushing an extreme ideology and then trying to block the parents. We're simply asking to maintain the status quo in Mahmoud to allow parents to continue to make these decisions, especially on issues of gender and sexuality where all 50 states require some kind of parental consent. But there are some states that are continuing to buck the rule from the court.

We'll have to be—we'll have to be watching that carefully. Thank you. Mr. Daugherty, Christian parents have drawn a lot of attention in this case, but it wasn't just Christians who objected to what the Montgomery County public schools did. Can you talk about why parents from other faiths found the school system's policy so concerning?

Sure. As a practicing Catholic, I know that tradition best and I understand how it violates, you know, that tradition. But certainly as Mr. Baxter knows, his clients included Muslims, Eastern Orthodox, I think there were some Jewish parents involved. So all the Abrahamic religions were represented. And I think, you know, just you look to scripture and things like that that show that these types of lessons that were being taught by the storybook series violate that. And again, as we talked about, some parents who were completely secular, not religious, they too objected thinking that, you know, my child—and this started like with pre-K and then kindergarten up to fifth grade—that no children should be exposed to this kind of stuff at that young age. And the notion that the school board was trying to do so offended a lot of people, religious and even non-religious.

Yeah, they could see it went against science and even common sense. Ms. Parshall Perry, you mentioned in your testimony, and I quote, that "parental rights are pre-political, ancient, and fundamentalist." I agree fully. Can you explain more what that means and how these three pillars are essential to preventing government tyranny?

Absolutely. These are connections that are rooted in biology, the very nature of the parent-child relationships, which predates not only government but the Constitution itself. In fact, some of the earliest writings that we see are from the 13th century in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, in which he wrote about the nature of the parent-child relationship and how it is fundamental. It is that basic building block of all civilized societies. And it is something on which the Supreme Court first weighed in in 1923 in Meyer v. Nebraska, recognizing that this was a right that simply had to be found somewhere in the Constitution because we knew it had always existed from time immemorial.

We'll lose our country if these fundamental principles are broken down, starting with the family and the parents in controlling their children for the best interest of our country. Thank you so much. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

I now recognize the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Scott, for five minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Rothschild, is there anything in the Mahmoud decision... ...that would allow a parent or group of parents to veto information given to other children other than their own?

Part of the problem with the decision in Mahmoud is how confusing it is. On the one hand, it presents itself as very narrow, an interpretation that was echoed by Mr. Baxter. And the court goes on and on for about 10 pages explaining how indoctrinating these picture books were, suggesting that that would be the limiting principle. But then, somewhat cryptically, Justice Alito adds a paragraph at the very end saying, in any event, it doesn't matter. Essentially, everything that I just said doesn't matter. And the only question is, does this interfere with the parent's ability to instill within their child their religious values or their religious beliefs? There's no endpoint to that.

Well, but they can opt their own children out. Can they veto the material being shown or presented to other children?

Ostensibly not, because the decision is framed around opt-outs specifically.

Okay. Now, to opt out, do you have to have a legitimate claim of religious liberty, or can you opt out for values or opinions like, I don't want climate change presented, or not for religious purposes, but I just don't think LGBTQ material ought to be presented to that, it's just age-inappropriate? Do you have to have a legitimate claim of religious liberty?

Mahmoud is a religious liberty case, yes.

So you just can't opt out on opinion?

Right.

Alito had some other information in there about a threat to religion. It can be contrary to your religion. Does it have to be a threat to your religion?

Well, that language of a threat comes from Yoder, where the threat that the court is articulating in Yoder is a threat to the survival of this distinctive religious community, the Amish community in Wisconsin. So it somehow gets transported to opt-outs in public schools, even though Yoder is talking about opting out of compulsory education laws for two years, the ages of 14 to 16, under very specific circumstances. So the language of threat now is used in Mahmoud to suggest that so long as anything in the curriculum threatens the parent's ability to instill the parent's religious values in their children, that threat is constitutionally protected.

Okay. Is there any consideration being given in this decision to the harm that may be inflicted on other children when they see some of their classmates opting out? All of a sudden, it puts a different view on the material they may be given. Is any consideration being given to the effect of all these opt-outs on the other children?

The court gives no consideration to that. It just dismisses it out of hand. So one of the arguments that the board made was that there's inherent value to teaching inclusivity to children, and you can infer from that that it very much undermines the message of inclusivity when a group of students stand up and walk out. It's like a walkout, essentially, from that particular teaching. And the Supreme Court was just extremely dismissive about that particular interest that the state had articulated.

And finally, if you have a complaint about this, what agency in the federal government would you seek guidance from? Would it be the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education?

I would assume so.

And are you aware of what's happening to that agency? Being dismantled along with the rest of the department?

Somewhat.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

I'll now recognize myself for five minutes. Mr. Rothschild, thank you for being here to testify today. I just want to get some clarity on your position. I mean, you disagree with the Mahmoud decision clearly, right?

Yes.

And so nevertheless, it is the law of the land now. So what is the, what do you want the takeaway to be from your testimony today? What action would ideally you want to follow from it, given that Mahmoud is the law?

Well, to the extent that Congress is contemplating any legislation in the aftermath of Mahmoud, which itself would, I mean, somewhat be unconstitutional unless it's authorized by the Supreme Court, in other words, unless the Supreme Court has interpreted that into the Constitution itself. But to the extent that Congress is contemplating going further than that, my point is that Mahmoud should be celebrated less than it seems to be celebrated.

I see. So you kind of paint this picture of how Mahmoud has unsettled this, you know, settled body of law on this particular issue. But it is true that even prior to Mahmoud, schools across districts across the country do allow opt-outs, right?

The key there is that it's the districts that allow the opt-outs.

Right. But the existence of opt-outs is not inherently destabilizing in some sense, is it?

Absolutely not. What's destabilizing is constitutionalizing opt-outs.

Do you think opt-outs are appropriate in some circumstances?

Sure.

Okay. So but you think that there's no constitutional basis for that?

There's no broad general constitutional basis for that. It should be a local decision made by the districts themselves.

I see. So for the parents in Montgomery County who had very strong objections to this content, what was their recourse in your view of the law?

They may not have had recourse. Democracy would be their recourse.

Democracy would be the recourse. Okay. And so you don't think there are circumstances in which there might be rights that individuals hold irrespective of what, you know, the overriding policy of their jurisdiction is?

Well, the question isn't are there rights? The question is is this the right?

Yeah. I mean, I think that you just made an important concession, which is that you would leave parents without a recourse no matter how vile, no matter how, you know, discriminatory the curriculum that presented in their classroom is. And I think that's a serious problem. And I think that you paint this decision as somehow some sort of rupture in jurisprudence or destabilizing. But actually, I think what's different now is the type of content that's coming into classrooms and the fact that districts are refusing to provide opt-outs for that content. So Mr. Baxter, do you think that is an appropriate characterization?

It's important to remember that American democracy is tempered by the Bill of Rights, which protects the rights of individuals to live consistent with their religious beliefs, their own speech. And every, you know, I spoke to a Washington Post reporter who had a similar view to Mr. Rothschild, but he wanted to object his children on issues that were concerning to him. And so every parent has their own opt-outs, and it's important to realize that Mahmoud protects the rights of all parents.

Yeah, it's interesting. I thought he might say that the recourse is to go to private school, which is in fact what, you know, various briefs and the lawyers for the county argued. But there's a problem with that as a legitimate recourse for folks as well, right?

Right. Most parents can't realistically afford to send their children to private school or to homeschool them, as was the case of most of our clients.

Yeah, it's ironic because, you know, there's this often opposition to school choice that exists among, you know, certain segments of the education establishment. But when it comes for to those who have the means to enroll their child and to exercise that choice, they're all for it. Do you agree, Mr. Daugherty?

Yeah. No, I mean, the notion that you have to choose between either raising your children in your faith or going to a public school, to me, that's an unconstitutional kind of choice. And the notion that just, well, people can easily send their children to private schools, I should say, or homeschool them, to some extent, that to me is reminiscent of, you know, let them eat cake. I mean, for example, just because, you know, you have these other ways of dealing with this, but those ways cost a lot of money, a lot of time resources. So to me, it is kind of almost let them eat cake kind of choice for parents who object to things like occurred in Montgomery County.

Yeah. What do you think, Ms. Parshall Perry, about this idea that we should just be satisfied with the idea that parents have no recourse no matter how vile or how controversial or how threatening to their fundamental values content in classrooms is?

Well, that invokes the arguments that we heard in the colloquy with Justice Jackson during oral arguments in Mahmoud when she herself talked about sending kids simply to private school. Private school is about 10 percent of American school kids. Nearly 90 percent of them go to public schools. It is a function of necessity for many parents. It was for my three children. I have two sons who have disabilities who specifically benefit from the civil rights laws that are enforced through public education and will continue to be, regardless of the future of the Department of Education. They will be offloaded to other agencies per interagency agreement or congressional action. But it is, I think, a false choice to say you must participate in a mandatory tax scheme, but you also have to give up your religious liberty rights.

Thank you very much. And I actually appreciate your sort of honesty, Mr. Rothschild, in just saying there is no recourse rather than pretending that there is some recourse. But I think that's an alarming thing for many parents who are concerned about what's going on in some of our schools. So with that, I'll now recognize the ranking member for five minutes.

Thank you, Chairman. And I want to follow up on this conversation because I was here listening and Mr. Rothschild didn't say there was no recourse. He said there was democracy. And I remember years ago in Oregon, the school board had made a decision that the majority of the residents of the district didn't support. So they ran candidates and they changed the school board and they changed the decision. So that is democracy. So I don't want to put words in Mr. Rothschild's mouth, but I don't want there to be a perception that there's no remedy because there is. Again, Mr. Chairman, I wish we were here talking about the armed masked agents that are lurking outside of schools and the gun violence that students are experiencing. And we're here today because some people are claiming that their religious beliefs are threatened by some school lessons that may perhaps just acknowledge existence of gay people. And to me, it's concerning. I want students to learn critical thinking and know that their parents are involved in that, and I think that's really critical. But we do have an expert here on the intersection of religious belief. And I just want to ask you, Mr. Rothschild, how did your Hasidic background and your rabbinical training shape your experiences and influence your understanding about the debate concerning Mahmoud?

So I grew up in a Hasidic community, which in many ways was a really beautiful upbringing, childhood, and education. But it also was quite lacking, in particular with respect to basic secular education. It's no secret that the Hasidic community schools do not teach basics, including science, math, literacy. And so attending law school, I was particularly interested in understanding how it could be that a society would allow so many children, over 100,000 of them in New York alone, to be deprived of what is considered a basic right for every child.

Thank you. I appreciate that very much and your insight and what you bring to the conversation. I want to talk a little bit about the limiting principles that you were discussing. I know Pierce because I'm from Oregon, as more than a century ago. But if you think about back in 1972 with Wisconsin versus Yoder, where they addressed the free exercise of religion by the Amish, and there was discussion about that today. Previous rulings had rejected the view that mere exposure to educational materials or ideas conflicted with the student's or parent's religious beliefs, why that does not violate the free exercise clause. So how did Mahmoud change that? What are the limiting principles that we're going to need to be aware of?

So on the one hand, Mahmoud seems to be suggesting there is a limiting principle, which is that it's fact-dependent, case-specific, that the courts would have to parse the curricula that's in dispute. In Mahmoud, it's picture books for three to five-year-olds to determine whether that curricula is in any way indoctrinating. But like I said before, the court also walks that back at the very end, just sort of sneaks that in there by saying that in any event, those are the exact words, none of this matters. So if none of this matters, the ostensible limiting principle, which itself is not all that much of a limiting principle because indoctrination isn't something that is objectively recognizable. One could argue that all of education is indoctrinating, or none of it is indoctrinating. I don't know how anybody could really tell the difference. But then the court seems to walk it back by saying so long as there is an interference with the ability of parents to raise their children according to their religious beliefs, that's constitutionally prohibited.

So if there has to be some sort of fact-intensive analysis to determine if there's a threat and whether there's interference, how's that determined? And by whom? Could a Christian Scientist say, I don't want my child to learn anything about health or science and opt out of that? I mean, I just don't understand how this is going to work. Do you have any sense?

I don't have a sense of how this will work, but I could imagine a whole host of very problematic scenarios, including, for example, say a teacher tries to teach the value of non-discrimination against religion and specifies and says it's wrong to discriminate against Jews or against Muslims. And some parents have a problem with that because of their sincerely held religious beliefs because, you know, Chapter 16 of Mark says that those who are not baptized are condemned. So I have no idea how in any sense this can be bounded.

I share your concern. Before concluding, Mr. Chairman, I want to note that we have heard in this committee again and again about returning education to states. But here we are, using this hearing as an attempt to dictate what can and cannot be taught in schools. And we've heard countless times in the committee that that is not the federal government's role to interfere in local curriculum decisions. We should not be using our time and resources to perpetuate a culture war that most American families don't want. And I encourage my colleagues to select hearing topics that actually matter, like gun violence, trauma inflicted by ICE, and how dismantling the Department of Education affects schools and students. And Mr. Chairman, I do ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a letter from Americans United for Separation of Church and State on religion in public schools, as well as a scholarly article by Richard Katskee and Ira Lupu called Mahmoud v. Taylor: Cause or Effect of Disruptions in the Public Schools?

Without objection.

I yield back.

Now recognize Mr. Owens of Utah for five minutes.

Thank you. Thank you so much. As a dad of six kids and 18 grands, this makes my blood boil. I am not, I cannot understand how we're sitting here talking about how strangers should raise my kids. Now, if you want to know how this opt-out is going to look, we got it. It's called choice. And you're going to see the mass opt-outing of programs like this. Three and four-year-old kids being taught this sexual smut. And we're sitting here as adults thinking it's okay. I'll say this, just to summarize before I get in my questions. We're seeing adults, grown people that have the power of having little children in their class that they cannot escape. They're captured. Hiding from the parents the curriculum that they're going to teach no matter what the parents think or don't think. By the way, that's the way the communists and socialists work. If you want to know how that looks, it is not hypothetical. And then hide behind unions so they won't get fired. I say two things about these kind of people. They're bullies and they're cowards. And I don't want them anywhere close to my kids. So I will be choosing opt-out. And my parents, my kids will be choosing, and my grandkids will be choosing opt-outs whenever we have a situation like this. And I can tell you what's going to happen. The free market's going to show itself in a big way. Schools like districts like this will go out of business. We will not fund this anymore and parents will not show up anymore. And schools out there that are doing the right thing, teaching our kids how to read, write, think, communicate, articulate, debate, and succeed will prosper. And we won't have to worry about going through this democracy mess that takes forever as our kids are being indoctrinated. Boy. I just cannot believe we're having this conversation with grown people. I just don't get it. I just don't get it. Anyway. No, I do get it. But anyway. Mr. Daugherty, you mentioned that some parents objected to inappropriate teachings who had no religious faith. While I'm glad that the court protected the rights of these religious parents, I'm concerned about the school boards that still force non-religious parents to have their kids indoctrinated. Your written testimony quoted that Justice Kagan mentioned that probably a lot of non-religious people who aren't really thrilled about this either. How do you think courts will look at protecting rights of the non-religious parents?

Well, as I think Ms. Perry noted, there's a case called Pierce that says that parents have parental rights under the 14th Amendment's substantive due process clause. And it says critically, children are not mere creatures of the state. That's very important. Children belong to their parents who have a duty to love them and raise them, and that's really where the first line of child development begins. The notion that now that educational bureaucracies distrust parents and exclude them from decisions, that's gotten, I'm afraid, too far out of hand in this country. And a case like Mahmoud is a case when they push back. And I do, I must disagree. I think there are limiting principles. I don't think this is going to be hard to deal with. As I mentioned in my testimony, in Montgomery County now, these issues are addressed by simple refrigerator magnets. Each semester, each student gets a refrigerator magnet that says what's going to be taught, the books they're going to be taught, and if they are, if those are lessons that violate sincerely held religious beliefs of parents, parents can opt out. So I don't think this is any kind of difficult, you know, onerous problem for schools to deal with. If anything, I think schools, public schools, public teacher unions overreached. They got perhaps a little ideologically arrogant, and this is a good way of pushing back on that.

I think you said something I just want to make a point. It's called arrogance. The district argument was a parent's free exercise was not burdened because they could remain free to enroll their children in other private schools. That's pure arrogance. Well, guess what? It's coming. School choice is going to allow them to go to private, public, charter, homeschool, parochial. You're going to see a remarkable opt-out, and I'm excited about that. Real quickly, Mr. Baxter, many opposed the lawsuit against the district, believed that these parents should have engaged in the democratic process to make their voices heard rather than resorting to suing the school districts. Can you explain why the democratic process here is the wrong remedy?

Parents did engage in the democratic process when they were called bigots, racists, and xenophobes. And this was a very diverse group of Americans of all religious and political stripes who just simply wanted to protect their children's education. And that's really what the First Amendment's for, is to make sure that religious liberty of individual families is protected.

My advice for these folks who think this way, keep it up. You're going to find yourself out of a business, out of a job, because we're opting out of this mess for sure. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And I yield back.

Representative Adams of North Carolina is recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses for being here. The Supreme Court's decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor was narrow, but the conversation surrounding it has not been. There's a real risk that this ruling is used to blur a long-standing constitutional line between protecting families from compelled belief and undermining the basic function of public education. Public schools do not exist to affirm any one worldview. They exist to prepare students to live in a diverse, pluralistic society. That necessarily includes exposure to ideas that students and families may not agree with. So my questions today are about limits, about guardrails, and about making sure that we do not turn a narrow ruling into a broad mandate that destabilizes classrooms across the country. So let me turn to our witnesses. Mr. Rothschild, the Supreme Court has consistently distinguished between compelled speech or forced affirmation of belief on the one hand and the ordinary work of public education, including civics education, that exposes students to differing ideas over time. In Mahmoud, did the court meaningfully engage with that distinction? And going forward, how should courts understand the difference between unconstitutional coercion and the slow, non-coercive process of educating students in a democratic society?

That last line of yours, I believe, is from Barnette, cited in 1943 by Justice Jackson, which was considered the quintessential statement on this very distinction that you're raising between your right to send your children to private school and that if your child is to attend a public school, that within public schools there are some limits. So to go back to a question that Mr. Kiley was asking me before, I think there are limits, and Barnette, for example, represents some of them. And lower courts since 1943 unanimously held to that distinction as well. Mahmoud disrupts it.

Okay. So do you see a risk that Mahmoud could be misinterpreted to treat mere exposure to ideas as constitutionally suspect, even when no student is required to affirm or adopt those ideas?

I think it definitely will be interpreted that way, yes.

While Mahmoud was framed as a narrow ruling, it raises broader questions about who gets to decide what is fundamentally necessary to teach children. So what concerns you about courts or Congress stepping too far into curriculum decisions traditionally made by educators and local communities? And would a federal opt-out law risk replacing professional educational judgment with litigation-driven oversight?

Much better than I can ever articulate this, let me just quote to you Justice Jackson, the author of Barnette, in his concurrence in McCollum in 1948. He said, if we are to eliminate everything that is objectionable to any of these warring sects or inconsistent with any of their doctrines, we will leave public education in shreds. Nothing but educational confusion and a discrediting of the public school system can result from subjecting it to constant lawsuits. Now, maybe that's the point.

Maybe so. So in your view, which institutions are best suited to set these boundaries in a way that protects religious liberty without eroding the mission of public education? Local school boards, educators, states, or federal lawmakers? Which one of those?

I mean, it has long been recognized that if there's any area where democracy is to reign, it's with respect to local government. And there's nothing perhaps more local than boards of education in educational districts. Again, to quote from Brown v. Board of Education, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments.

Thank you, sir. I agree. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Pursuant to the previous order, the chair declares the committee in recess subject to the call of the chair. We'll plan to reconvene promptly in five minutes. Thank you. The committee now stands in recess. [Gavel sounds.]

[Recess.]

[Video plays.]

[Recess.]

[Gavel sounds.] Committee is back in order. Representative Miller of Illinois is recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Parents have the God-given right to raise their children, especially when it comes to educating them in accordance with their faith. This fundamental freedom includes the right to know what their children are being taught in school. These foundational rights are reinforced by federal legislation through the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, FERPA, and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, PPRA. The bottom line, parental consent is integral to our educational framework. Schools cannot conceal student information from a parent. Schools must recognize this reality. But it comes as no surprise that Democrats want to take away parental rights in education. When parents voiced concerns about what their children were being taught during the pandemic, Joe Biden's Department of Justice labeled them as domestic terrorists. Last year, parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, scored a monumental victory when the Supreme Court reaffirmed what we already knew to be true: parents control their children's education. However, many school districts continue to circumvent the Supreme Court's ruling, including my home state of Illinois. For example, Chicago Public Schools featured sex education curriculum beginning in kindergarten. In the first grade, there were lessons on how to define gender identity. In second grade, students were taught the concept of gender stereotypes and how to advocate for change. In fourth grade, the district curriculum utilized a gender snowperson to help students explore the concepts of gender identity, sexual orientation, sex assigned at birth, and gender expression. By fifth grade, there was an introduction to puberty blockers, and students were forced to read Gender Unicorn, learning about sexual orientation and other concepts like gender role stereotypes and gender expression. Students were even expected to define terms like cisgender, non-binary, and transgender. Last year's victory in the Mahmoud case means it's time for these schools to fall in line. My first question is to Mr. Baxter. In your written testimony, you mentioned the role of Congress in protecting parental rights in education, particularly through FERPA and PPRA. Do these laws, as written, sufficiently protect parental rights, or are further protections needed?

They are often ignored by many school districts, and even the Supreme Court's ruling is being ignored by many school districts. So I think Congress's attention to this issue and using its funding mechanisms can be an effective way to protect the rights of parents.

Thank you. What about when schools manipulate FERPA and call it educational outreach when they send student data to left-wing voter registration organizations?

It's a little bit out of my expertise. I'm here to testify on the religious liberty aspects, but hopefully under all of these laws, schools and will ensure that all students are treated equally regardless of their religion or irreligion. All students deserve an equal opportunity to be educated.

Yes, and to have their privacy respected, and we are on that. My next question is to Mrs. Parshall Perry. In your written testimony, you mentioned Justice Kennedy's attempt to assuage concerns of religious freedom violations in light of the Supreme Court's Obergefell ruling. Could you please explain how this ruling was an affront to religious freedom and has set off a domino effect of violations, including the Mahmoud case?

Yes, in fact, Justice Alito himself, in his excoriating dissent to the Obergefell decision in 2015, actually responded to Justice Kennedy's majority opinion and said, this is going to be utilized to stamp out every vestige of religious dissent. And in fact, his words proved to be true. In fact, the Mahmoud decision was made necessary because of individual decisions like the Obergefell decision. Now, we can talk about whether or not it is bad jurisprudence, which I think it is. It divined a constitutional right to same-sex marriage from the same shadowy ether of the 14th Amendment that the court did in Roe v. Wade, and that has been subsequently overturned. And then we can talk about it as a policy prescriptive matter. But I think the fallout is something we cannot ignore. And in fact, as we've seen sort of cultural institutions be overtaken by progressive orthodoxy, we find parents, good, noble, honest parents, who simply want their children educated in the crosshairs of a culture war they did not start.

And that's what we want too. Thank you, and I yield back.

Representative Lee of Pennsylvania is recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It would seem that the issue isn't that parents have a right to raise their children. I think the issue is that a certain parent doesn't have a right to raise somebody else's child. You don't get to determine for other children what religious beliefs they get to be exposed to in their schools. And it just feels to me that Republicans and conservatives are always feigning outrage about the wrong things. For instance, right now as we are attempting to make it harder for children to receive a holistic education, American children are falling behind by every metric on the global scale. While kids are behind in reading, conservatives are busy trying to make sure that they can't read a story about a little girl who adores her uncle who's getting married. That is the most recent outrage. Reading is a crucial part of how children learn about themselves and how much they have in common with others. It's how they learn about the world. Not only do kids deserve to see themselves reflected in books and the curriculum, they perform better when they do. The reality is is that this is just another right-wing attempt, couched in parents' rights, to shield children from getting a real education. Everything this administration and the right-wing movement does is a blatant attempt to make us less educated, more narrow-minded, and easier to control. This has a massive impact on our ability to function as a society, let alone to compete internationally. Right now, we are not a country that people are taking seriously. Today, it's about exploiting religious exemptions to shield children from the reality of queer people existing, but other times it's been trying to shield children from the reality of Black history lessons and how Black history is American history, or indigenous studies, or various languages, as we've seen through the outrage of Bad Bunny performing at the Olympics. It's always centered in bigotry and xenophobia. It is suffocating our country. Mr. Rothschild, First Amendment doctrine has shifted dramatically in the last few years due to President Trump's appointment to the Supreme Court. Do you expect we will continue seeing religious freedom weaponized to justify censorship in schools, and how do you believe this will impact education, excuse me, public education in our country?

Thank you for the question. Religious liberty jurisprudence has expanded drastically under Trump, under the Trump administration and his appointments to the Supreme Court. So for example, during the pandemic, the Supreme Court interpreted the meaning of religious discrimination under the Free Exercise Clause in exceptionally expansive ways such that basically any law that doesn't provide an exemption for religion is discrimination against religion. Most recently, it's Mahmoud, where the focus is not on religious discrimination, although there's vestiges of that in Justice Alito's opinion too, where he frames the lack of opt-outs and the teaching or the reading rather of these picture books as hostility, as explicit hostility towards religion. So essentially anything can be framed as discrimination against religion. But technically speaking, Mahmoud is a religious liberty case, not a religious discrimination case.

So conservatives are also hoping that cases like Mahmoud v. Taylor will cause already under-resourced public schools to preemptively censor curriculum to avoid costly lawsuits from a vocal minority. We're already seeing this happen. A RAND study found that teachers are preemptively whitewashing curriculum following the manufactured moral panic against critical race theory. In Justice Alito's ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, he said not allowing parents to opt out imposes a hostile environment, as you mentioned. Do you believe that this ruling could also create a hostile environment for LGBTQ+ children or other marginalized children in the same vein?

Yeah, I mean, I could just imagine, and this was argued in Mahmoud, that if you allow for opt-outs, it's not only about the administrability of the opt-outs. And one of the concerns that the board had in Mahmoud was the influx of requests for opt-outs once these children's books were introduced into the curriculum. It's not just administrability, it's also the messaging that is sent when children are allowed to walk out of the classroom as soon as teachings about inclusivity of other children is implemented.

Thank you. Conservatives are exploiting religious freedom to suppress other constitutional rights, like the separation of church and state or equal protection. Our duty to religious freedom does not absolve us of the duty to protect marginalized groups from environments that condemn our existence. I want to end with the important point that despite this administration's best efforts, inclusive educational materials are still legal in this country. I welcome a hearing about the decision in American Federation of Teachers et al. v. U.S. Department of Education et al. that struck down the department's guidance against diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. And I stand with all the educators, students, and families navigating the bigotry and the xenophobia of this administration. We are working to ensure that children feel included and accepted and safe and have the opportunity to become educated global citizens. I yield back.

Representative Harris of North Carolina is recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all of you that are serving on this panel today and for your testimonies. I found myself just overwhelmed at times in reading the testimonies and to see how all of this played out there in Montgomery County. And I want to just talk for a moment that one of the things that overwhelmed me was just kind of the attack or the villainization of parents that seemed to be working from the board's perspective. Mr. Daugherty, your testimony mentioned that MCPS was incredibly hostile to parents who had legitimate religious concerns about the curriculum. In fact, you quoted one board member who suggested that if the parents were right, the board would have to, quote, send out notices so white supremacists could opt out of civil rights content, end quote. I find that absurd, and the board should be ashamed of themselves of comparing Muslims and Christians to white supremacists. And so, Mr. Daugherty, I just want to ask you if you could take a moment just to give us your perspective about that comparison.

Yeah, I mean, again, as I said earlier, I think one of the things Mahmoud revealed is how disconnected public schools are from the students and the families that they serve. The notion that Jewish families, Muslim families, Christian families, Ethiopian Orthodox are white supremacists or can be even equated to white supremacists, that's insulting as anything. I mean, that making that kind of extreme analysis or analogy just shows how out of touch they were. And you know, again, I think this is a problem in Montgomery County. Hopefully it's been resolved after they lost this lawsuit. But you know, the notion that this storybook series was necessary to, I think they said, disrupt heteronormative thinking, and which, you know, seems to be something that I don't know why kindergartners need to be able to have that sort of thinking disrupted in order to learn to read and write and do mathematics. So yeah, it really was kind of scary how the school board chose this is the hill they were going to die on. Luckily they lost, but it revealed a lot about what their priorities are, and it's certainly not serving the families that are in their county.

Thank you, sir. And Mrs. Parshall Perry, there's been a lot of conversation today about inappropriate content in this hearing, but I think many people really don't realize how deeply inappropriate it was. In fact, some of the left have characterized these teachings too often as lessons in mere tolerance or lessons in just mere understanding. And I think that is horrifically misleading. Would you take a moment just to share how inappropriate was this content?

This centered on five LGBTQ-themed storybooks for children as young as three and up. So again, we need to view this from the perspective of the diminished capacity of minors. This was very distinctly designed to change perspectives. And in the colloquy with Alan Schoenfeld, who's the attorney for MCPS, and Justice Alito, he said, why don't you just come out and say exactly what you want to say? You're trying to change minds. You have a distinct perspective on these things you are trying to institute in minors' minds. Two of the storybooks, not only Uncle Bobby's Wedding, but Pride Puppy, addressed non-binary individuals, drag queens, and pride parades. These are individuals who don't have a concept of their own identity as it relates to whether or not they want to be a fire person or a fairy when they grow up. What we're dealing with is a designed attempt to change minds on perspectives. And I would harken back to what Congresswoman Lee said earlier, which is there are a number of very primary considerations in American education. Our biggest threat is the fact our children cannot read or do arithmetic, and there is a reason Harvard now offers a remedial math class. If we divest this kind of curriculum from public education, our children will succeed.

Thank you, ma'am. And really quickly in the last 40 seconds, Mr. Daugherty, you mentioned in your written testimony about parents asking for opt-outs, and that was brought up earlier. And it's fairly common across the country for schools to allow parents to opt out. So the Maryland parents really weren't asking for a radical new policy. But can you talk for the last 20 seconds about the kinds of teachings parents can often opt out from, both at MCPS and in general?

47 of 50 states allow parents by statutory right to opt out of classes on human sexuality, family life, including Maryland. Now in Maryland, just showing you frankly the disingenuous of the board here, they didn't classify this storybook series as human sexuality because that would have meant the parents had their statutory right to opt out. Instead, they said it was part of English and language arts, which to me seems silly. I mean, again, I think most of the people in this room were able to learn to read and write and do math without having their heteronormative things disrupted. So I think it was slippery, evasive, and disingenuous not to say this is a human sexuality part of the curriculum, in which case there would be a statutory right under Maryland law and most other states for the parents to opt out.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Representative Hayes of Connecticut is recognized.

Thank you, and thank you to our witnesses for being here. But I'm having a really hard time following along with this hearing because terms like school board and district are being used in the abstract. Where I'm from, the school board is composed of local members of the community who are elected to serve on these boards. And in the state of Connecticut, we have our curriculum framework come from the state, which says these are the topics that have to be taught. And then at the local level, curriculum committees, local curriculum committees, decide how will we teach those. In my district, a local curriculum committee, I should probably add that I'm not talking about this in a hypothetical way. I taught in my school district, was the head of many curriculum committees, was the Connecticut Teacher of the Year, was the National Teacher of the Year. I look back at my notes to see how the last eight curriculum committees I served on were composed, and they were subject matter teachers, technology coordinators, special education teachers, administrators, parent representatives always on these curriculum committees, students, and community members who decided not only what the curriculum would entail, but how it would be taught. One step further, as a teacher, every week I had to turn in my actual lesson plans of what I was going to do Monday through Friday in my class. Those lesson plans were posted on ParentSquare. Parents had the ability to view them. And we always, always, always had an opt-out policy. I actually believe that parents should have the ability to opt their children out of a lesson that they feel goes against their religious beliefs. I also, however, am a mother who had all of my children formerly and currently went through public school system. I think that I am a good, noble, honest parent, and I want my children to learn lessons about kindness and inclusivity and do not object to queer subject matter. So I think that the rights of those parents, parents like me, should also be respected to have their children learn about their neighbors and people in their community. And while I agree that math and reading are very important, I also, and let me just say this, I want my children not only to learn about those things, but then come home and us have conversations about what this looks like in our community because they will be living alongside people who they may not agree with, who have different lifestyles, who make different choices than them. And I am as equally concerned about them learning reading and algebra as I am about producing conscientious good adults who are not racist or xenophobic or homophobic or bullies in their community. So as a parent, I want my child exposed to all of the information so that they can make the most informed decision. So I guess my question is to Mr. Rothschild, I'm going to come to you. Is Congress the body that is best suited to make these curriculum decisions? Because every committee, every hearing, every conversation, every quote, every statement that comes out of the other side is about these things should be made locally. And now we're here today saying that a local board of education made up of local representatives, local curriculum that chooses their curriculum materials that people can challenge if they don't like the decisions that come out of this board, they can elect new people to the board and change it. And now we're saying that those people still shouldn't be able to make decisions on behalf of the children in their community. Mr. Rothschild, should that be something that Congress does?

Again, I think the Supreme Court worded it a lot better than I could ever word it. And so in Milliken v. Bradley, this is what the Supreme Court had to say: 'No single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control over the operation of schools. Local control over the educational process affords citizens an opportunity to participate in decision-making, permits the structuring of school programs to fit local needs, and encourages experimentation, innovation, and a healthy competition for educational excellence.' That's a quote from a previous Supreme Court decision within the Supreme Court decision.

I just want to say, I mean, I have members of my own family who identify as gay. I have people in the community who I look up to who identify as gay, and I want my children to know that those individuals are not an abomination, those individuals are not indoctrination to care about people being able to live their life in the way that they choose. And again, the fact that this committee is doing this, you know, I'm a teacher, I also represent Newtown, Sandy Hook. We have yet to have one hearing on school shootings. So if you want to protect children from the things that help them thrive in school, I would suggest that we start with that. I yield back.

Representative Mannion of New York is recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Today, we're not only discussing a flawed Supreme Court decision, but also a much larger agenda. My colleagues on the other side continue to mischaracterize what's happening in our classrooms, and I believe it's a major disservice to our students and teachers to put them at the center of these cruel culture wars. The statements made by my Republican colleagues in this committee make it clear that they view Mahmoud case as just the beginning, opening the door for more sweeping opt-outs from school curricula. As a former teacher, I can tell you where I stand and what I've always fought for. Like my colleagues, I believe it's critical for parents to be involved in their children's education, and they are. Parents have more access to teachers, school boards, administrators than ever before with online curricula, emails, live-streamed school board meetings, and beyond. That was my experience. And parents should be involved. And how public education has improved is to make sure that that access continues to increase, and I believe that it will. I've made that case before in this committee, including to Secretary McMahon, that parents have more access and more visibility in their student's education than in the past, and that's a good thing. But I don't believe we should go down the slippery slope of having parents opt their kids out of any topic they don't agree with or object to. Our public schools reflect our communities and the diversity of people and ideas within them. All curricula should be age-appropriate, and parents have access to administrators and teachers. Whenever I, in the 30 years of my classrooms, saw other teachers that may have put things into the lessons that were not appropriate, that was addressed immediately and often preemptively as teachers, as my colleague Representative Hayes said, have to hand in their lesson plans and syllabi ahead of time. So we can't hide our kids from the world around them or prevent them from engaging with different ideas or different people. I also believe that our teachers and schools administrators know their students well and should be trusted and should continue to be accessible, that they do have our students' best interests at heart. Despite claiming to talk about local control in education and caring about that, this administration has made multiple attempts to target specific content and place new politically motivated demands on our schools. They've also weaponized funding, which is hurting all students just because a state may be represented by a Democrat or a Republican doesn't mean that all of those students or parents or teachers are Democrats or Republicans. So unfortunately, weaponizing and canceling grants is hurting our students, hurting our schools, increasing class sizes, and disrupting budgets. Our schools should always be inclusive places, and religious beliefs should always be respected. But I worry about the political and legal attempts to broaden the scope of the Mahmoud ruling and the implications of far-reaching opt-out policies. Mr. Rothschild, my question is for you. Is mere exposure to educational content that parents might find religiously objectionable enough to trigger an opt-out under Mahmoud?

Possibly, yes.

A follow-up question. From the ruling of Mahmoud, do you believe that parents have the ability to opt out of a high school unit on evolution?

Possibly yes as well.

And do you agree that a parent should be able to opt their child out of evolution as a unit?

Not as a constitutional right, no.

Mrs. Parshall Perry, do you believe that parents should be able to opt out of a unit on evolution?

The Supreme Court's already addressed the issue and actually said there is no opt-out right for particular scientific perspectives. And in fact, in the wake of the Civil Rights Act enactment and desegregation efforts, both of those periods of time in American history, the Supreme Court routinely struck down so-called religious objections to, for example, desegregation laws. They know when they can smell a rat. They've done so for many, many years, and they will continue to do so now. These are ...were very honest religious objections to inappropriate material. The court will continue to apply that interpretation going forward.

Understood. So it sounds as though your answer is that evolution would not be able to be opted out of because it is accepted science and therefore a religious objection towards it would not be permissible.

It is a scientific perspective, absolutely. It is generally included in science classes for which there is no constitutional or statutory opt-out right. There may be religious objections, those can be raised individually, but the Supreme Court has already addressed the question of evolution in public education.

Thank you. I yield back.

Representative Rulli of Ohio is recognized.

Well, thank you, Chairman. Nobody knows their child better than a parent. Not a teacher, it's the parent. Parents have a God-given right to know what their children are being taught in schools. In Ohio, we protect that right. Parents can review any material that includes and specifically sexual content and excuse that child in Ohio from that being taught. Being a school board member for many years, when I heard about the violation of parents' rights in Maryland and that being stripped away by the parent, it just totally made me sick. These schools force children to view, and here's the keywords here, here's the sweet spot, sexually explicit material of children under the age of 18 and threaten them with legal action against a parent who would fight back, who would even question it. In this, in this particular subject, we have Muslims America, Christian and Jewish America uniting for transparency in our school districts. None of us want sexual content for minors being taught in the school. That is unacceptable. So the question would roll out to Mr. Daugherty. You said there was 47 states. Can you elaborate on the three states that chose to take away the opt-out option for the parents? Some of these school districts have been threatening, and here's another keyword for you, truancy against the child and the parent for opting out on their kids being taught sexual content for being under the age of 18. I don't know what kind of upside-down world we're living in where it's okay to teach sexual-oriented material to kids under 18. So Mr. Daugherty, a two-part question. The first one going to those three states and then another one for all of us on the board, including my honorable friends on the other side of the aisle. Is there some guardrails that Congress could actually do to make a better system so we could teach all material, but not material that's illegal for minors?

Sure. Unfortunately, I haven't, I did my research many months ago, so I can't recall the three states that don't. And I think but even those states, I think informally it's recognized that if you really want your children not to participate in certain things that are highly controversial, offend your religious beliefs, I think that's, that's commonly recognized. And again, it was recognized in Maryland, but they said, well, this isn't about human sexuality, it's about learning to read. So you have to read Pride Puppy in order to read, which seems to be a bit of a stretch here. So with regard to what Congress can do, I mean, Congress, there's obviously discussion right now about the Department of Education, what's going to be happening with regard to that. Department of Creation is a creature, is a creature of Congress. Congress created it back in 1979. And what will happen with it going forward remains to be seen. Specific guardrails, I think, you know, again, I think the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights here is a tremendous guardrail and doesn't waver. And I think it was one that the parents were able to take advantage of. I would say also too that parents and voters do need to be careful about who's on their school board sometimes. It's my understanding, Mr. Baxter may know better, but some of the board members who stood up for this, this principle back when the case was started are no longer on the school board. But, you know, and I haven't really given any thought specifically to what the federal government can do about this.

Does anyone else have a comment on that?

I can weigh in. We heard earlier about whether or not the Office for Civil Rights was the appropriate venue to be able to actually bring these challenges to. It is not. Having served as senior counsel in the U.S. Department of Education in the Office for Civil Rights, I can say specifically they enforce and apply civil rights law, not constitutional law. These parents exhausted every administrative level of opportunity closest to where these actual decisions were being made. They were routinely struck down. The Montgomery County Public School system stonewalled them at every attempt. The federal courts were their final recourse. The Department of Education doesn't have any authority whatsoever when it comes to the First Amendment.

Any suggestions to Congress?

We have current existing spending clause laws, like the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, that might provide a vehicle to be able to legislate in such a way that decisions like this don't come up again through the federal court system. Obviously, the Constitution conceives of specific enumerated rights for this chamber, and one of those is spending clause legislation, and there is quite a number of it that has actually been passed through these chambers that might provide an opportunity to say we're going to enforce the parental right as we've done with FERPA, as we've done with PPRA. Those are suitable mechanisms, I think, going forward.

Well, thank you all for your time. And with that, I yield my time back to the Chair.

Representative Grijalva of Arizona is recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before coming to Congress, I served 20 years on a school governing board in Southern Arizona, one of the largest, most diverse districts in the state. I worked directly with parents, teachers, and students every single day. I know firsthand how critical parent engagement is to student success. But I also learned something else just as important. Public schools exist to serve all students. They are not vehicles for political agendas, nor are they spaces where perspectives can be erased simply because they make some uncomfortable. The Supreme Court's decision, Mahmoud v. Taylor, was narrow. It does not give politicians permission to micromanage classrooms, override professional educators, or turn public schools into the latest front in a culture war. Framing this federal overreach as consistent with returning education to the states is plainly contradictory to the majority's own stated agenda. Federal government overreach is the opposite of local control. At the same time, we cannot ignore the broader context. Instead of investing in students and strengthening public education, some are pushing to dismantle the Department of Education and privatize our own public school system. These efforts do not empower families, they exacerbate existing inequalities, weaken accountability, and put our most vulnerable students in greater risk of being left behind. Our responsibility is clear. We must ensure students learn in a safe, welcoming, well-funded schools where curiosity is encouraged, facts are taught honestly, educators are respected, and every child has a real opportunity to succeed. This, my question will be to Mr. Rothschild. Is there a limiting principle in Mahmoud? Are we on a slippery slope where schools will find themselves overwhelmed with opt-outs that the curriculum will be a race to the lowest common denominator as to what is taught?

I think that that concern that you have voiced is a legitimate one, and is one that was articulated by none other than Justice Alito in 2021, where in a concurrence in Mahanoy, which involved social media and free speech for children, for students, he said the following. He said, parents are not required to enroll their children in a public school. They can select a private school, and they may also be able to educate their children at home. By enrolling a child in a public school, he went on to say, the parents have impliedly consented to delegating some of their parental authority to the public school.

Thank you. What are the failures of the Mahmoud decision in your opinion? What did the majority opinion essentially get wrong?

Well, the majority opinion essentially rewrote previous precedents claiming that it was just applying them. It restructured the way religious liberty works even in prior eras which the Supreme Court has claimed it's simply resurrecting. Religious liberty has classically meant that if an individual has an opposition to doing or not doing something that is required of them by the government, they can invoke the free exercise clause. But here, the right as it is framed by Justice Alito in Mahmoud is a right to unfettered control over the moral shaping of your child, even when you have opted to send your child to a public school.

What I think is really interesting is that every school district has their own governing board that is duly elected. Those decisions should be made by those that are elected from that community. My concern, and one that I've, you know, pondered quite a few times while I've been in this room, is that the Republican Party, from what I understand, is the party that wants things to go back to the local level. But then when it's something that's an inconvenient truth, we tend to stick our nose in and try to rewrite federal. I want to continue to support our duly locally elected school districts to make decisions about school curriculum. Every single curriculum that is taught in our public schools is open in Arizona to anyone who wants to, and they have the option to opt out, and we should continue to push those kind of initiatives. Thank you, and I yield back.

Thank you very much. And I'll now recognize the ranking member for a closing statement.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the witnesses for the testimony today. You know, this subcommittee is responsible for and should be comprehensively addressing the real issues affecting K-12 schools and protecting our children's future. But instead of addressing the actual dangers to students, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have chosen to turn classrooms into the epicenter of a culture war. I noted Mr. Daugherty just said that it's his understanding that the Maryland, Montgomery County, Maryland school board members aren't there anymore. Well, you know what happened yesterday in Montgomery County? A 16-year-old student was shot in his school. You can't solve that with a refrigerator magnet. The Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud versus Taylor has opened yet another avenue for Republicans to attack public education to the detriment of students and families. No one is arguing that parents should not be involved in their children's education. On the contrary, we recognize that family involvement is critical to a child's development and educational success. But by turning what is taught in the classroom into a political issue and improperly a federal issue, Republicans are using our children's future as a weapon to deepen partisan divides and threaten the foundations of our public education system. My Democratic colleagues and I will not support politicizing education. We will continue to work with students, with parents, with educators, and with communities until every student receives an accurate, high-quality, age-appropriate education in a safe, well-funded environment without fear of gun violence or masked federal agents breaking down the classrooms. Education that engages them and inspires them and leads them to be creative, tolerant, critical thinkers who are compassionate members of their community and our country. And I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you very much. Thank you to all of our witnesses. I think a major takeaway for me from this hearing is that the position of the opposition here is that there is no recourse for parents. That's an exact quote from their chosen witness, which I find to be very troubling. This idea that, you know, kids as young as kindergarten could be exposed to the most graphic content and the parents have no recourse. They're not allowed to pull their child out even for a day. That a school could inculcate values that are wholly incompatible with the religious upbringing that the parent has chosen for the child, and there is no recourse. They can't let them sit out even a day of class. So I think that the opinion of the Supreme Court in Mahmoud simply affirms common sense foundational principles in this country. And this isn't about controlling curriculum at the federal level. When a parent opts out, the curriculum stays the same. The other students who choose to participate, their families can be exposed to whatever curriculum is chosen at the local level. It certainly isn't about undermining local control either. I believe very strongly in local control when it comes to education. But at the same time, there are basic constitutional rules of the road that all institutions must abide by. And what the Supreme Court has recognized is that religious liberty is one of them, and the right of parents to direct their upbringing of children is intricately bound up in that. So I think this is a very important decision, and this committee will be assuring that it is honored and respected so that the rights of parents are respected throughout the country. What objection there being no further business, the committee stands adjourned. [Gavel sounds.]