Naomi Shatz speaks to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly About Religious Opt-Outs from Public School Curricula

Last month in Alan L. v. Lexington Public Schools, a federal district court in Massachusetts granted a preliminary injunction requiring a Massachusetts elementary school to provide notice and an opportunity for a parent to opt his child out of lessons that touch on sexual orientation and gender identity. The decision implemented last year’s Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which held that parents have a constitutional right to opt their children out of exposure to certain materials in the classroom that conflict with the parents’ religious beliefs.

Shatz told Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly that cases like Alan L. and Mahmoud are likely to have a chilling effect in schools: “It seems unlikely that schools will have the resources, both administrative and financial, to deal with individualized opt-out requests from numerous parents on different materials or to litigate legal challenges around those opt-out requests, and instead may preemptively remove any materials that could be subject to challenges or opt-outs from the curriculum entirely,” Shatz said.

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