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SEPTEMBER 2026

Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor on June 27, 2025. As students head back to school this fall, this report examines what the decision held, traces how a coordinated legal movement has sought to expand it far beyond its narrow scope, and analyzes the implications for First and Fourteenth Amendment protections covering religious freedom, parental rights, and LGBTQ+ inclusion. This report is not intended to and should not be understood to provide legal advice.

Overview Inclusive education remains lawful, but it faces an organized campaign to narrow its reach. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor that the Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland must reinstate a policy providing advance notice and an opportunity to opt out for parents who do not want their children to participate in classroom lessons or the reading of books that include “sensitive religious and ideological issues,” including content about LGBTQ+ communities. After the Court’s decision, the school district and the parents settled in February 2026. When this case was filed in 2023, Montgomery County was named the most religiously diverse county in the United States. That same year, the school board added several LGBTQ+-inclusive books to its English and Language Arts curriculum, including five storybooks for elementary school students. Before long, the school board rescinded an advance notice and opt-out policy for the LGBTQ+-inclusive books. One school district official attributed the rescission to an increasingly unmanageable volume of optout requests and the concern that opt-outs would expose other students to social stigma and isolation. Becket (formerly the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty), a right-wing nonprofit law firm, brought a lawsuit on behalf of a group of religiously diverse Montgomery County parents, challenging the rescission of the opt-out policy. The case reached the Supreme Court after the lower courts sided with the school district and denied the parents a preliminary injunction. The Court reversed the lower court decision, holding that the parents were likely to succeed on their Free Exercise claim and were entitled to a preliminary injunction preventing the school board from

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

rescinding the advance notice and opt-out policy while the litigation proceeded. Writing for the Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, Justice Samuel Alito explained that rescission of the policy was likely an unconstitutional burden on families who object to positive depictions of same-sex marriage and transgender people on religious grounds. The decision relies heavily on Wisconsin v. Yoder, a 1972 Supreme Court decision holding that the state of Wisconsin could not constitutionally compel Amish parents to send their children to school past the eighth grade. The Court examined whether the government policy substantially interfered with the parents’ First Amendment right to direct their children’s religious upbringing. The Mahmoud majority concluded that the five LGBTQ+-inclusive books in question, like the compulsory attendance law in Yoder, “carr[ied] with them ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs that the parents wish to instill in their children.” The “government’s operation of public schools,” the majority further stated, “implicates direct, coercive interactions between the State and its young residents.” The majority asserted that the LGBTQ+-inclusive curricula and policies may not only constitute direct coercion of students to “make an affirmation contrary to their parents’ religious beliefs,” but also may require forms of “subtle coercive pressure,” particularly in the K-12 setting, due to “the students’ emulation of teachers as role models and the children’s susceptibility to peer pressure.” The Mahmoud decision does not ban any content from classrooms. Nor, because of its basis in the Free Exercise Clause, does it create any new parental rights related to public school curriculum or LGBTQ+-affirming policies. Mahmoud’s reasoning nonetheless left several critical questions unanswered. For example, the opinion does not articulate whether there is any set of curricular materials to which parents may not pose a religious objection. Also, the opinion does not address other school policies such as those governing teachers’ use of students’ requested names and pronouns. Eight months after releasing its opinion in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Court issued a short, unsigned “shadow docket” decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta, blocking policies in California designed to protect transgender students. The Court’s interim decision reinstated a lower court order regarding California public schools’ duty to disclose a student’s gender identity to their parents without the student’s consent. Specifically, the Court held that a class of California parents was likely to succeed on two constitutional claims: first, that the policies against forced outing violated their right to “guide the religious development of their children”

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause; and second, that the policies violated their fundamental parental right to “direct the upbringing and education of their children” under the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision partially reinstated a district court injunction against the policies, blocking their enforcement against the parent plaintiffs while California continues to defend the policies in the district court and at the Ninth Circuit. The Court’s Free Exercise analysis in Mirabelli relies heavily on Mahmoud, stating that “the intrusion on parents’ Free Exercise rights here — unconsented facilitation of a child’s gender transition — is greater than the introduction of LGBTQ storybooks we considered sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny in Mahmoud.” Justice Barrett wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh, in which she emphasized that the Court’s decision was “preliminary,” but that the Court was justified in weighing in now because the Ninth Circuit “significantly misunderstood Mahmoud” when it ruled against the parent plaintiffs. Justice Kagan’s dissent in Mirabelli, joined by Justice Jackson, criticized the majority for abusing the Court’s shadow docket. The dissent noted that the Court received “scant and, frankly, inadequate briefing” on a “case raising novel legal questions and arousing strong views.” Regarding Mahmoud, the dissent pointed out that the “ink on that decision is barely dry, and courts have just begun to consider its meaning and reach,” making this shadow-docket intervention especially premature.

While Mahmoud already imposes difficult administrative burdens on public schools with limited resources, Mirabelli further ignores the challenges and perils of requiring educators to identify and police parental awareness of students’ gender identities. Mirabelli represents an alarming expansion of Mahmoud beyond the curricular setting and risks triggering abuse or rejection of transgender youth who are forcibly outed to their parents. At the same time, the decision’s precedential value is unclear; multiple courts considering Free Exercise and parental-rights claims in other cases have requested supplemental briefing on whether or how Mirabelli impacts their analysis.

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

01. Key Findings

Since the 2025 decision, Democracy Forward has tracked and catalogued more than 50 cases citing Mahmoud across the country. Our research has identified five key findings about the ruling, its application, and how its public perception is impacting millions of people across the country: 1. The Mahmoud ruling is narrow

Mahmoud requires only advance notice and opt-outs for specific curricular materials on religious grounds. It does not generally ban content, create new parental rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, or address pronouns, bathrooms, or school policies more broadly. Because the ruling is so narrow, efforts to expand its application are particularly alarming. 2. The same right-wing network that brought Mahmoud is working to expand its reach

A small set of allied right-wing organizations that share a Christian nationalist vision for public education — Becket, First Liberty Institute, Alliance Defending Freedom, and Defending Education — drive many of the attempts to expand the decision, recycling the same “coercion” theory in each new context. The lawsuits citing Mahmoud cover a wide

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

array of issues including vaccine requirements, healthcare access, federal funding, misgendering individuals, and attempts to ban books and shape public school curricula. This follows a playbook this network has used before: take a narrow ruling and expand it as broadly as possible. Many of the groups in this network employed the same strategy with Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Court’s 2023 affirmative action decision. 3. The courts are mostly holding the line, but the exceptions are grim

Of the over 50 cases Democracy Forward has tracked that cite Mahmoud, over half of the cases attempt to expand the holding. Since the decision, judges have mostly rejected attempts to stretch Mahmoud beyond its facts. The expansions that have succeeded did so on other grounds — through a Free Speech theory rather than Free Exercise, or by reaching beyond the public school setting altogether. Though the narrow reading of Mahmoud is largely holding up in court, the right-wing movement continues to generate a steady stream of lawsuits designed to test the limits of the decision, and to pressure schools into preemptive compliance. The successful expansion attempts — particularly Mirabelli and the Sixth Circuit’s pronoun ruling in Defending Education v. Olentangy Local School District Board of Education (described below) — are alarming, and open routes to challenge policies and practices based on free speech or parental-rights claims, which don’t depend on a religious objection. 4. You don’t need to win in court to reshape public institutions

Through model policies, opt-out templates, disinformation campaigns, and state legislation, there is a coordinated movement pressuring schools into what is effectively preemptive compliance with Mahmoud — achieving censorship and exclusion without ever winning in court. The real aim is to reshape public institutions around a narrow set of conservative far-right values. 5. Inclusive education is still lawful and worth defending

Despite the pressure, the Court has not banned any curricula. Protecting LGBTQ+ students and honoring religious diversity are not mutually exclusive goals. Teaching students about a range of identities,

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

communities, and worldviews reflects the democratic values of equity, dignity, and community and advances one of the foundational purposes of public education, preparing children for citizenship in a diverse democracy.

Protecting LGBTQ+ students and honoring religious diversity are not mutually exclusive goals.

02. Legal Landscape After Mahmoud: A Snapshot of Recent Decisions on LGBTQ+ Inclusion, Healthcare and Funding, and Religious Pluralism

To date, the cases Democracy Forward has tracked that cite Mahmoud fall under three main categories:

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

• • •

Rolling back LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools Expanding Mahmoud to public health and federal funding Using Mahmoud to protect religious pluralism

Rolling Back LGBTQ+ Inclusion in Schools MISGENDERING PEERS Defending Education v. Olentangy Local School District Board of Education, 2:23-cv-01595 (S.D. Ohio); 23-3630 (6th Cir.) A group of parent plaintiffs, on behalf of their children, challenged an Ohio school district’s policy that required students to use peers’ preferred pronouns and identified transgender people as a protected group. Represented by Defending Education, the plaintiffs argued the policy violated the students’ First Amendment right to free speech. After the claims were dismissed in district court in 2023 and the dismissal was affirmed by a panel of the Sixth Circuit in 2024, the case was reargued in front of the full Sixth Circuit. In November 2025, the en banc Sixth Circuit reversed and directed the district court to grant a preliminary injunction. Several judges wrote concurrences citing Mahmoud’s “coercion” rationale to support this outcome, despite the fact that Free Speech claims are doctrinally distinct from the Free Exercise claim in Mahmoud. In January 2026, the district court granted that preliminary injunction. In May 2026, the parties entered a consent order stipulating the school district would not enforce the policy requiring students to use peers’ preferred pronouns. The consent order permits the District to enforce its anti-harassment policy as it pertains to the protection of transgender students amongst other protected groups. This is one of the few expansions to succeed so far: the en banc court has barred the school district from enforcing its pronoun policy. Because the court’s reasoning is grounded in free speech rather than free exercise, it creates a second doctrinal route around school nondiscrimination protections — one that does not depend on a religious objection. If schools and litigants continue to invoke this theory, it could further undermine schools’ ability to maintain safe and respectful environments for all students.

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

COMPULSORY NOTIFICATION OF STUDENT GENDER IDENTITY Mead v. Rockford Public School District, 1:23-cv-01313 (W.D. Mich.) Mirabelli is far from the only case in which parents argued that the First Amendment and Mahmoud require public schools to notify parents about changes in their child’s gender identity. For example, Alliance Defending Freedom represents Michigan parents suing their school district for not disclosing their child’s use of a different name and pronouns at school. In September 2025, the district court dismissed the parents’ Free Exercise claim, which was based on Mahmoud, but allowed their parental-rights claim under the Fourteenth Amendment to proceed. Following the Mirabelli decision, the parents moved for reconsideration of the dismissal of their Free Exercise claim, which was granted in August 2026. This case serves as a reminder that even where the Free Exercise route stalls, the Fourteenth Amendment theory may survive. The conflation of these two doctrines presents significant risks for transgender students with unsupportive parents, even in school districts with policies against forced “outing” and discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

BANNING BOOKS FOR ALL STUDENTS E.K. v. Department of Defense Education Activity, 1:25-cv-00637 (E.D. Va.); 25-2497 (4th Cir.); 26-1002 (4th Cir.) In early 2025, the Department of Defense Education Activity (“DoDEA”) removed 596 library books, including fiction and non-fiction texts about race, puberty, diversity, sexual orientation, and gender identity, ostensibly to comply with multiple executive orders issued by the TrumpVance administration. In response, 12 students from six military families challenged the book removals as a violation of their First Amendment right to receive information. Defending Education’s friend-of-the-court brief supporting the DoDEA’s decision invoked both Mirabelli and Mahmoud to argue that removing “objectionable” material from schools protects parental rights by making opt-outs unnecessary. The court rejected that argument and issued a preliminary injunction requiring restoration of the books — an early sign that Mahmoud may not fare well as a basis for censorship claims. But the argument itself is telling, as it reveals that, in some cases, the true purpose of demanding opt-outs may be to pressure schools into censorship by making it too burdensome to maintain an inclusive curriculum. The Trump-Vance administration’s appeal of the district court’s injunction is currently pending in the Fourth Circuit.

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

EXEMPTION FROM ANY INCLUSIVE CURRICULUM L. v. Lexington Public Schools, 1:25-cv-13047 (D. Mass.) A Massachusetts parent sued his child’s school after officials denied his request to broadly exempt his child from kindergarten classroom instruction on DEI and health curricula. When making his initial request, the plaintiff cited the Mahmoud decision as the basis for his request to exempt his child from any “instructional activities and programs which cover issues of sexual orientation or gender identity.” The plaintiff alleged the instruction promotes “sexualized and ideological messages” contrary to his faith and therefore violates his right to freely exercise his religion. In December 2025, the district court granted the plaintiff a preliminary injunction requiring the school to provide advance notice and the opportunity to opt his child out from reading books with LGBTQ+ themes. The parent and school agreed on the list of books affected by the ruling but disputed two titles: Pink is for Boys and Except When They Don’t. In February 2026, the district court clarified the preliminary injunction by defining “LGBTQ+” and denied the parent’s request to include the two disputed titles, holding that the books did not implicate the parent’s religious beliefs as he articulated them in his complaint. In July 2026, the district court dismissed the plaintiff’s substantive Due Process claim, asserting specifically that Mahmoud “did not consider the Due Process Clause as part of its analysis,” but refused to dismiss the plaintiff’s Free Exercise claim, procedural Due Process claim, and state constitutional and civil rights claims. While the plaintiff secured a narrow opt-out tied to specific LGBTQ+ book titles, the court’s injunction and clarification rulings refused to adopt the broad, open-ended exemption he sought, instead cabining its relief to cover only the specific books named in the complaint.

Expanding Mahmoud to Public Health and Federal Funding MISGENDERING FOSTER CHILDREN Bates v. Pakseresht, 2:23-cv-00474 (D. Or.); 23-4169 (9th Cir.) An Oregon woman who wished to adopt foster children, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, challenged a state policy requiring adoptive parents to agree that they would “respect, accept, and support” foster children’s sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. The

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

plaintiff claimed that she objected to the policy based on her religious beliefs, and that the subsequent denial of her application to be an adoptive parent violated her First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion. The district court denied her request for a preliminary injunction that would allow her to be certified as an adoptive parent while litigation continued. But in July 2025, a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit reversed, concluding the plaintiff was likely to succeed on both her speech and religion claims. The majority quoted Mahmoud in concluding that the state policy was “unmistakably normative” because it was “clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.” This case marks another alarming expansion of Mahmoud. By carrying the “normative” logic out of the classroom and into adoption licensing, the court’s ruling lets a prospective parent’s religious objection override a child-welfare requirement, putting the safety and wellbeing of some of the country’s most vulnerable children directly at risk.

RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION FROM VACCINE REQUIREMENTS Miller v. McDonald, 1:23-cv-00484 (W.D.N.Y.); 24-681 (2d Cir.); 25-133 (U.S. Supreme Court) In 2019, New York state repealed the religious-beliefs exemption to its school vaccine law in an attempt to curb one of the worst measles outbreaks in the U.S. in decades. A group of Amish parents and schools represented by the right-wing group First Liberty Institute and law firm Lehotsky Keller Cohn sued the state, alleging the lack of a religious exemption violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. The case was dismissed for failure to state a claim, which the Second Circuit upheld in March 2025. After Mahmoud was decided, the plaintiffs asked the Court to hear their case or send it back to the Second Circuit for reconsideration, arguing that parents have a constitutional right to exempt their children from mandatory vaccination laws based on religious beliefs. Multiple allied right-wing groups and Republican-controlled states filed friendof-the-court briefs supporting the request. In December 2025, the Court vacated the previous judgment and remanded for reconsideration in light of Mahmoud. In June 2026, the Second Circuit reaffirmed the dismissal of the Free Exercise claim, agreeing with a similar decision from the Fourth Circuit that “Mahmoud does not change the result.” If any future court adopts this argument that Mahmoud requires religious exemptions from vaccination requirements, it will endanger public health by prioritizing one person’s religious beliefs over the safety and health of their entire community.

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

EXTENDING MAHMOUD TO FEDERAL GRANT CONDITIONS Planned Parenthood of Greater New York v. Department of Health and Human Services, 1:25-cv-02453 (D.D.C.) In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a new policy notice, which drew on Mahmoud to require that federally funded teenage pregnancy prevention programs provide parents “advance notice (including relevant specifics) and the ability to opt out from any content or activities, especially those related to sexuality, that may burden their religious exercise.” Multiple Planned Parenthood affiliates that receive these federal funds immediately challenged the policy notice, arguing that the policy was arbitrary and capricious and violated their due process rights. In October 2025, the district court vacated the policy notice, agreeing with the plaintiffs that Mahmoud had “at best, only limited relevance, if at all, to the necessity for parental optout opportunities for older adolescents, particularly outside the public school setting.” The court thus rejected the Trump-Vance administration’s attempt to extend Mahmoud from the K-12 classroom to federal grant conditions. Despite this loss, the administration subsequently doubled down on its efforts to impose unlawful conditions on teen pregnancy prevention program grantees. In June 2026, the agency issued new program requirements mandating, among other things, that grantees “align” with the administration’s priorities that prohibit “gender ideology” and diversity, equity and inclusion practices, and provide “meaningful opt-out provisions.” These terms would reimpose — in some respects verbatim — the requirements the district court previously found to be arbitrary and capricious and not required or justified by Mahmoud. On July 14, 2026, a coalition of counties and organizations represented by Democracy Forward filed a new suit to challenge this policy. On August 19, 2026, the court issued a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from implementing the new program requirements while the litigation proceeds.

USE OF GOVERNMENT FUNDS FOR RELIGIOUS CURRICULUM Woolard v. Thurmond, 2:23-cv-02305 (E.D. Cal.); 24-4291 (9th Cir.) A group of parents represented by First Liberty Institute challenged California’s refusal to subsidize the purchase of religious instructional

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

material for two students enrolled in independent study programs at state charter schools. California law prohibits public schools, including charter schools, from teaching religious doctrine. The parents argued that the independent study programs more closely resembled private homeschooling, which is allowed to include religious doctrine, and that the subsidy denial violated their Free Exercise rights. In September 2025, the Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal of all claims. The court concluded that California charter schools are public schools because they are subject to many of the same regulations as traditional public schools and that the parents were not entitled to state-subsidized religious instructional material. In other words, the Ninth Circuit declined to read Mahmoud to compel public funding of religious instruction. In August 2026, the plaintiffs asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision in the case.

Using Mahmoud to Protect Religious Pluralism MANDATORY TEN COMMANDMENTS DISPLAYS IN PUBLIC SCHOOL CLASSROOMS Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District, 5:25-cv-00756 (W.D. Tex.); 25-50695 (5th Cir.) A group of parents represented by ACLU, ACLU of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Freedom From Religion Foundation, and the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett challenged a Texas law requiring the display of a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in public K-12 classrooms. The parent plaintiffs argued that the Texas law violates their Free Exercise rights, since not all families adhere to that religious doctrine. The parent plaintiffs also cited Mahmoud’s finding that LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum was religiously “coercive” in support of their claim that the Ten Commandments display is similarly coercive. While a panel of the Fifth Circuit initially agreed that the law violated the First Amendment, the en banc Fifth Circuit overturned that decision by a vote of 9-8 in April 2026. The majority opinion distinguished Mahmoud by noting that the Ten Commandments posters were not curricular and that students were not required to recite, believe, or affirm them. The decision in this case cuts both ways. The court declined to apply Mahmoud’s coercion rationale to a mandated religious display, so that expansion attempt failed. But by a one-vote margin it upheld the display, a setback for church-state separation. In August 2026,

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

the plaintiffs asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Fifth Circuit’s decision. Whatever the doctrinal path, the government’s constitutional obligation to avoid religious coercion extends to people of every faith and to those with no religious faith, and the promotion of any specific faith is not a legitimate government objective.

03. Mahmoud Beyond the Courtroom

The courtroom is only one front in the battle to expand Mahmoud. Even where litigation has been unsuccessful, the decision is already being used to shape new school district policies and reaffirm existing state legislation across the country.

School District Policies Outside of litigation, school districts across the country have been evaluating, changing, and in some cases justifying their policies in response to the Mahmoud decision. At the same time, parents are still learning what the decision means for them and their children. There is no clear consensus about what Mahmoud requires or prohibits.

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

1. Montgomery County Public Schools implemented an opt-out provision as required by the Supreme Court’s ruling. As of September 18, 2025, the district approved 58 opt-out requests from 43 families, representing less than 0.03 percent of the district’s 160,000 students. But the opt-out requests go beyond just LGBTQ+-inclusive books to include books that cover social justice, cultural diversity, racism, and police brutality. The district’s opt-out request form requires parents to acknowledge that the basis for their request is interference with their sincerely held religious beliefs, but it does not require parents to explain those beliefs or how the books would conflict with them. 2. Seattle Public Schools has gone in a different direction, creating a policy that forbids students from opting out from “learning about particular identities or groups of people.” The policy is inclusive of book readings with LGBTQ+ characters, much like those at the center of Mahmoud. An Alliance Defending Freedom spokesperson said the policy “needs to be dealt with,” and suggested that litigation may be filed to challenge the policy. 3. The New Jersey Department of Education advised districts that the state’s existing religious opt-out statute already satisfies Mahmoud and emphasized that the opt-out applies only to individual parents raising a sincere religious or moral objection. It does not, the guidance stressed, permit a district, school, or grade level to drop inclusive instruction altogether.

State Legislation Advance notice and opt-out policies are not novel. Movements to use legislation to allow for parental opt-outs were originally a response to the failure of court efforts pursuing that goal. By the 1980s, a significant number of states required opt-outs from sex education. By 2015, over 10 states allowed opt-outs from standardized testing. Several states have laws that require or allow opt-outs, opt-ins, or curricular objections to certain statutorily defined material in K-12 classrooms. The following are recent, illustrative examples of such laws — all were signed prior to the Mahmoud decision, but none earlier than 2024 — demonstrating a recent rise in the desire for specific kinds of opt-outs:

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

IDAHO •

H 239 (2025) went into effect in July 2025, signed into law in March 2025. The law requires a two-week advance notice for all parents of any “human sexuality instruction” and requires parental opt-in to any such instruction.

MONTANA •

HB 471 (2025) went into effect in July 2025, signed into law in May 2025. The law requires parental opt-in to any instruction meant to inform students about gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation. It also allows parents to review and opt their students out from “human sexuality instruction.” The Montana School Counselors Association challenged the law in October 2025.

NEW HAMPSHIRE •

HB 1312 (2024) was signed and went into effect in July 2024. The law requires a two-week notice of all programs of “sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”

•

HB 10 (2025) went into effect in July 2025, signed into law in June 2025. The law directs school boards to create policies for parental objections to instruction materials.

OHIO •

HB 8 (2025) went into effect in April 2025, signed into law in January 2025. The law requires parents to be notified, permitted to review, and allowed to opt their K-12 students out of “sexuality content.” It also requires parental notification of any student request to identify with a gender that “does not align” with their sex assigned at birth.

TEXAS •

SB 12 (2025) went into effect in September 2025, signed into law in June 2025. The law prohibits policies, procedures, activities, trainings, and programs that reference gender identity or sexual orientation. It also prohibits all instruction, guidance, or club sponsorship to students, from PreK–12th grade, on sexual orientation or gender identity. It also prohibits staff from assisting in or providing any information on social transition. It requires a parental opt-in to any “human sexuality”

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

instruction. •

This law was challenged by the Gay Student Alliance, ACLU of Texas, and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas in August 2025, and the plaintiffs were awarded a preliminary injunction on specific portions of the law in February 2026. The injunction prohibits enforcing the ban on diversity, equity and inclusion, the ban against social transition assistance, the restrictions on sexual orientation, and gender identity instruction and related clubs.

WEST VIRGINIA •

SB 154 (2025) went into effect in July 2025, signed into law in April 2025. The law prohibits any student from being required to participate in instruction related to sexual orientation or gender identity if there is a parental objection. It requires schools provide notice and opt-out to parents for any such instruction. It requires parents be notified of any student request for an accommodation “intended to affirm the student’s gender identity” and prohibits school and county board employees from providing “misleading information” about a student’s gender identity.

Coordinated Campaigns Led by Conservative Advocacy Groups to Spread Disinformation Surrounding the Mahmoud Decision Despite the narrow and specific context in which Mahmoud was decided and should be understood, several right-wing advocacy groups have distributed content and resources for the public and parents to use in seeking to expand and weaponize the decision. These resources include opt-out forms for social transition (changing gender expression to align with gender identity), model policies, and school board statement language. 1. Defending Education created a broad template for parents seeking to opt out their students from all gender-affirming policies and practices. 2. Thomas More Society shared in a public letter their complaint about a school’s recognition of LGBTQ+ History Month.

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

3. Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty published a model school board policy and templates for teacher notice and parental opt-out requests. 4. Moms for Liberty provided an opt-out letter template and school board speech language within the framing of parental rights. 5. Advocates For Faith & Freedom made a parental opt-out template available for subscribers. 6. Massachusetts Liberty Legal Center created a public “legal advisory” in addition to their opt-out request template.

04. Actions to Protect Marginalized Students

Protecting marginalized students will take a commitment to continued advocacy, litigation, and community engagement in the years ahead. The following are examples of protective actions to consider:

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

Schools Set advance notice and opt-out policies that fit your needs and resources, and communicate them clearly to employees, communities, and caregivers. Doing so may protect LEAs from overcompliance and capitulation to sweeping censorship threats, while creating a system that will meet the needs of parents who genuinely desire an opt-out for certain qualified instructional material. Additionally, it is still worthwhile and essential for schools to also adopt inclusive policies.

Parents and families Resist messaging that weaponizes parental rights against children and excludes the voices of inclusive families. Through letters to officials, op-eds in local news publications, or public statements at school board meetings, contribute to the narrative that religious pluralism is an American ideal and teaching students to be inclusive and creating safe spaces for all students is a democratic necessity. Parental rights must be available to all parents; parents who affirm LGBTQ+ youth have the same rights as parents whose religious beliefs lead them to object to LGBTQ+inclusive instruction. Children also have a right to be free from abuse, neglect, and mistreatment.

Advocates Keep advocating for laws and local policies that affirm the inclusion of diverse books in libraries and diverse stories in classrooms. Highlight in your public statements and advocacy that longstanding education data shows that students who both explicitly see themselves in curriculum and are exposed to people dissimilar to them have a higher view of themselves and an increased connection to the world around them. Continue advocacy against broad and over-inclusive censorship attempts. Continue asserting that the holding of Mahmoud is narrow and cabined to advance notice and the opportunity to opt out from curriculum and instruction on the basis of sincerely held religious beliefs. Seek out opportunities in your community to defend protections for LGBTQ+ youth and expand protections for students of diverse backgrounds. The attack on LGBTQ+ youth must be met with equal, if not greater, support for inclusion and safety for all students.

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

05. The Path Forward

The coordinated effort to expand Mahmoud shows no sign of slowing, and it is no longer confined to schools. In addition to the cases discussed here, parties have attempted to expand the holding to employment discrimination, protection of Native American sacred sites, and freedom of speech on social media. These efforts share a common strategy: to take a narrow religious-exercise holding and stretch it into a general-purpose tool against inclusive policies. But the year’s developments leave reason for optimism. Mahmoud itself remains narrow, courts have so far refused to widen it in the great majority of cases, and the right-wing’s real power lies less in winning the legal argument than in generating enough litigation to pressure institutions into preemptive compliance. This is both a warning and an opening. This means the most consequential battles will often be fought not in the courtroom but in school boards, statehouses, and through the choices individual school districts make before any case is filed — and that a coordinated response across local advocacy, litigation, inclusive messaging, and protective legislation is more important than ever.

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

In this country, there is a version of public school education that both honors the religious beliefs of students and protects and uplifts LGBTQ+ students — one need not be sacrificed for the other. Preserving that possibility, against an effort designed to foreclose it, is the work ahead.

Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor

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Democracy Forward | Back to School, and Back in Court: The Weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor