Maryland School District Costs Taxpayers $6 Million in Fight over LGBTQ Books

The end to the one of the most contentious “culture war” legal battles in Maryland’s history, a federal judge ordered the Montgomery County Board of Education (BOE) in last month to pay a multimillion-dollar sum following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

According to court records the school system was ordered to pay $1.5 million in a final settlement to the families involved in the lawsuit which was a final blow in their effort to defend using LQBTQ books in the system. They were also ordered to pay attorney’s fees for the families involved the lawsuit which totaled $3.6 million. That was on top of the $1.3 million the BOE spent on their own legal fees.

The legal battle began in May 2023 when a religiously diverse coalition of parents—including Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox families—sued Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS).

The dispute centered on a new “inclusive” English language arts curriculum for students as young as pre-kindergarten. The parents objected to specific books, such as Pride Puppy and Jacob’s Room to Choose, which they argued promoted gender transitioning and same-sex relationships in a way that violated their “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Critics of the Board of Education argue that the entire expense was avoidable. Eric Baxter, lead attorney for the families, stated that the settlement sends a message that “running roughshod over parental rights isn’t just illegal—it’s costly.”

In the Supreme Court decision from last year Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “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.”

Following the court’s mandate, MCPS was forced to overhaul its transparency protocols. The district implemented what is now known as the “Refrigerator Curriculum”—a set of grade-specific outlines provided to all parents at the start of each quarter.

That curriculum requires that parents be notified at least two weeks before any instructional materials addressing family life or human sexuality are used, an opt out form for parents to excuse their children from specific lessons without penalty and that schools provide “comparable” educational activities for students who are opted out.

The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court was monumental in upholding parent’s rights in the education of their children, but as a former student and parent of Montgomery County Public Schools I would have preferred an opt in form for the materials as my experience has been that parents largely abdicate the education of their children to the school system and have no idea what they are being taught. And taxpayers as a whole just got stiffed for an unnecessary expense at a time when taxes are rising and squeezing residents.