Maryland school district settles $1.5M religious rights case

A court ordered the Montgomery County Board of Education to pay $1.5 million in damages to parents who recently won a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The settlement, signed Thursday by District Court Judge Deborah Boardman, concluded a three-year-old lawsuit first filed by a cohort of religious parents. The Supreme Court in June 2025 ruled in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor. It found that the public school district wrongly barred parents from opting their kids out of pride parades, storybooks lauding transgenderism, and setting pronoun preferences for children as young as three.

What is the impact of this settlement? The settlement showed public schools across the country that violating parental and religious rights was costly in addition to being illegal, Eric Baxter, an attorney at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said in a statement. Baxter, who represented the parents, said it enforced that parents have the final say in how their children are raised.

The settlement required the school district to pay damages to the families while placing the district under ongoing court jurisdiction to ensure compliance, according to Becket. The settlement also ensured that parents receive advance notice of any instructional materials that deal with sexuality. The school district has already begun facilitating opt-outs by providing parents with a refrigerator curriculum. The one-page document, meant for posting in the family kitchen, highlights what students are learning each quarter. Parents can then opt their children out of participating in those lessons.

What did the Supreme Court rule in 2025? The high court’s 6-3 ruling upheld the free exercise of religion as the group of parents who were Muslim, Christians, and Jewish. Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion that the storybooks were hostile to parents’ beliefs, and the school clearly used them to pressure children to conform to certain viewpoints. Alito said parents had a religious right to opt their kids out of these lessons.

Dig deeper: Read Steve West’s in-depth report on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor.