In what could be a harbinger of a pending Supreme Court case, a judge has ruled that schools cannot compel students to affirm messages that violate their religious beliefs nor deny parents the right to opt their children out of gender ideology lessons.
As the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether parents have the right to opt their children out of reading books that promote gender ideology, a federal district court told a California school district that it cannot force children to read such books without parental notice and the opportunity to opt out.
The case centers on La Costa Heights Elementary School, located in the Encinitas School District near San Diego. The school runs a mandatory “buddy program” in which 5th grade students mentor kindergarteners.
Traditionally, this program involved art projects, gardening, and reading sessions — with books selected by the students themselves. Each week, parents received a newsletter detailing which book was being read in class.
The process changed when teachers selected My Shadow is Pink, a book promoting gender ideology. That week, no notice was sent to parents.
The book tells the story of a boy who enjoys wearing dresses and playing with toys typically associated with girls. Because he doesn’t “fit in,” his shadow is pink instead of blue. The central conflict revolves around his father’s initial discomfort and eventual embrace of his son’s pink shadow as not a phase but as a reflection of his “inner-most self.” By the end, the father joins his son and wears a dress.
Without notifying families, teachers read the book aloud to the 5th grade class. Then the students sat with their kindergarten “buddies” to watch a video of the book being read aloud.
Following the video, they completed an “art project” in which the 5th grade students asked the kindergarten students to “pick a color that represents you” and traced the kindergartners’ shadows on the ground in colored chalk.
Two of the 5th grade students were upset by the lesson, as they were forced to affirm a message to their kindergarten buddies that violated their religious beliefs.
When the students’ parents asked the school to notify them in advance if gender ideology would be addressed in future books and to allow them to opt their children out of those reading sessions, the school refused.
In response, First Liberty Institute and the National Center for Law and Policy filed suit on behalf of two children, S.E. and P.D., and their parents.
On May 12, U.S. District Judge James Lorenz granted their request for an injunction, requiring the school district to provide prior notice to the parents and the opportunity to opt out of future gender ideology content or related projects in the buddy program.
Judge Lorenz ruled that having the students read the book with their buddies and trace their shadow in whatever color chalk they chose was compelled speech, violating the students’ First Amendment rights.
In the case of P.D., the judge wrote that his “presence next to his buddy during the read-along video presentation and subsequent tracing of his buddy’s shadow in the buddy’s chosen color implicitly conveyed P.D.’s endorsement of the message that gender can be a matter of one’s choice and subject to change—a message contrary to P.D.’s own beliefs and which he did not wish to convey to his buddy. P.D.’s required participation in the buddy class therefore directly and immediately affected P.D.’s freedom of speech.”
Lorenz concluded that the exercise violated the students’ First Amendment right to freedom of speech by altering the content of their speech.
Lorenz also cited California Education Code Section 51240, which requires that parents be notified in writing and given the opportunity to opt their children out when school instruction conflicts with religious beliefs. The law states:
“If any part of a school’s instruction in health conflicts with the religious training and beliefs of a parent or guardian of a pupil, the pupil, upon written request of the parent or guardian, shall be excused from the part of the instruction that conflicts with the religious training and beliefs.”
For instance, when gender identity was discussed in the 5th graders’ health education class, parents were given two weeks’ prior notice and were allowed to opt out their child from the lesson.
Lorenz noted the parents’ request for injunction did not represent a deviation from the status quo, but rather it was the district’s decision to discuss gender identity in the buddy program rather than in health class, along with its decision not to notify parents.
Lorenz’s injunction mandates that if the school district is going to teach gender ideology in the buddy program, it must provide parents with prior notification and the opportunity to opt their child out.
The injunction will remain in effect while the case proceeds through the court system.
The ruling comes as the Supreme Court is set to rule on Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which in which religious parents sued Montgomery County Schools in Maryland for failing to provide notice or allow opt-outs when reading books promoting LGBT ideology.
If your child attends a public school, there is something you must understand: Many teachers and administrators are actively working to indoctrinate your child while hiding it from you.
Even if your state has policies requiring parental notification and opt-outs for these topics in health class, some teachers and schools will introduce the topics in other lessons under the guise of promoting inclusivity and teaching against bullying. That’s what happened in Mahmoud v. Taylor, and it’s what La Costa Heights Elementary School did.
In both cases, school districts sought to deny parents the right to be notified or to opt out because they wanted to push ideologies on students that they know violate their parents’ religious or intellectual beliefs.
The fact that a school would intentionally deviate from its policies in order to introduce a book about gender ideology, without parental knowledge, and then have 5th grade students relay that message to five-year-olds is indoctrination, and it is abhorrent.
If these children had not told their parents about the lesson, the school district likely would have continued doing this unabated.
That’s why parents whose child attends public school must make it a point to have conversations every day with their child about what they learned that day. You also need to educate yourself about your — and your child’s — constitutional rights.
In this ruling, Judge Lorenz referenced several important legal precedents, among them West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette and 303 Creative v. Elenis.
In Barnette, the Supreme Court ruled that the children of parents who were Jehovah’s Witnesses could not be forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance because it violated their religious beliefs. A key quote in that case states,
“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
In 303 Creative, the Supreme Court ruled that nondiscrimination laws cannot be used to compel speech by artists. In that case, Colorado’s law would have required web designer Lorie Smith to design websites promoting homosexual weddings, which is against her religious beliefs. The case further entrenched the Constitution’s prohibition on government-compelled speech.
These are just two of the pivotal cases that protect the rights of parents and students when it comes to indoctrination by schools.
No school is allowed to force your child to participate in or speak a message involving gender identity of other ideological issues.
Depending on how the Supreme Court rules in Mahmoud v. Taylor, parents and students could find themselves with even stronger grounding to refuse LGBT indoctrination. We should pray that the Court rules justly as Lorenz did and honors the constitutional rights of both students and parents.
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