The Culture War Goes to Court Three recently decided SCOTUS cases were family-friendly. By Larry Sand
https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/11/the-culture-war-goes-to-court/
June 1 marked the 100th anniversary of Pierce v. Society of Sisters. This landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down an Oregon law that prohibited parents from educating their children in private and religious schools and required public school attendance.
Justice James McReynolds wrote, “The child is not the mere creature of the state,” which summed up the majority opinion in the decision.
A century later, however, the battle continues. On June 27, SCOTUS ruled 6–3 that Maryland parents who have religious objections can pull their children from public school lessons using “LGBTQ+ inclusive” storybooks. The Mahmoud v. Taylor decision maintains that parents have a fundamental right to direct their children’s moral and religious upbringing and that parental rights don’t end at the classroom door.
Children aged 5-11 were required to read or listen to stories such as Prince & Knight, about two male knights who marry each other; Love Violet, about two young girls falling in love; and Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, about a biological girl transitioning to a boy.
It’s important to note that the dissenting parents didn’t challenge the curriculum or demand that the district banish the controversial books. They simply wanted to be notified and have the opportunity to opt their children out of inappropriate and objectionable indoctrination provided at government-run schools. They did not advocate for schools to teach a specific religion or beliefs, but rather, they only asked that schools respect parents’ constitutional right to guide their children’s moral development.
Justices Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissented. In her opinion, Sotomayor incoherently argued that the majority was trying to allow parents to separate their children from experiences that are “critical to our nation’s civic vitality” and would sow “chaos” in public schools across the United States.
She added that “an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs.”
Those who believe that children ultimately belong to the state were outraged by the Court’s decision. National Education Association president Becky Pringle stated, “Students pay the price when books are censored and educators are silenced.”
Pringle added, “Today, in the ruling on Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court failed students. They have discounted and ignored the expertise of trained educational professionals and harmed students in the process. Shameful.”
Interestingly, a survey from the Pew Research Center found that half of K-12 teachers don’t believe students should learn about gender identity in the classroom. However, it also means that over a million teachers are comfortable teaching the subject.
In another 6–3 decision issued on June 27, SCOTUS upheld a Texas law requiring pornographic websites to verify users’ ages before granting access. The objectors argued that the law infringes on the First Amendment rights of adult Texans, citing concerns about privacy and security risks associated with transmitting identification information online.
However, Texas requires age checks to buy a lottery ticket, get a tattoo, or obtain a handgun license, Justice Clarence Thomas writes in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. Neither obscenity nor the internet is different. “No person—adult or child—has a First Amendment right to access speech that is obscene to minors without first submitting proof of age,” Thomas adds. The Texas law has “incidental” burdens on adults but “readily survives” intermediate judicial scrutiny.
With similar laws now enacted in at least 21 other states, the ruling empowers state authorities to protect children from sexually explicit online materials and may also open the door to regulating minors’ access to social media.
Additionally, earlier in June, SCOTUS issued a significant ruling upholding Tennessee’s ban on so-called gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, for minors. The decision, handed down on June 18, will likely shape how states develop legislation and how other gender-related cases proceed in the legal system.
In United States v. Skrmetti, most justices disagreed with the Biden administration’s argument that Tennessee’s law should be subject to more rigorous scrutiny in court. Instead, Chief Justice John Roberts stated in his majority opinion that courts should use a less strict standard called rational basis, which requires states to demonstrate that their law is rationally related to a state interest.
The Tennessee law forbids all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a [disagreement] between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”
While parents have every right to be happy with the SCOTUS rulings, the decisions come with a major caveat. No matter what the Court rules, teachers can teach whatever they want once the school day starts and the classroom door closes. As a former teacher, I know this all too well.
No public employee has more freedom, flexibility, or protection from oversight than teachers. As Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former teacher, writes, “A bus driver cannot choose to drive for social justice, disregarding his assigned route; a police officer cannot patrol a different beat if he perceives a more urgent need in a different neighborhood. By contrast, teachers—and those in their state and local districts who develop materials for classrooms—possess almost unlimited authority to shape what students read and hear by choosing texts, guiding classroom discussions, and selecting resources to reflect their educational priorities or philosophy.”
Parents, if you must send your child to a school—especially the government-run variety—please question them when they come home every day. Ask them what they learned, if the teacher talked about anything outside the three R’s, science, and history subjects, and if they said anything that made them uncomfortable.
If you refrain from this kind of involvement, don’t be surprised if little Johnny comes home one day and says his new name is Jane.
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