Just a week before America’s July 4, 2025, celebration of the document that declared not only independence but also the self-evident reality of Creator-endowed inalienable rights, the United States Supreme Court handed down its landmark parental-rights decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor. At issue, as summarized by Becket, counsel for the parents who brought the suit, was “the parents’ inalienable and constitutionally protected right to control the religious upbringing of their children, especially on sensitive issues concerning family life and human sexuality.”
Parents in Maryland are fighting back against the Montgomery County Board of Education for forcing pre-K and elementary-aged children to read controversial books that promote a one-sided transgender ideology, encourage gender transitioning, and focus excessively on romance—with no parental notification or opportunity to opt out. Parents from a variety of faiths—including Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—are united in seeking to guarantee their children an age-appropriate education that is consistent with their faith. These parents are simply asking to be notified when the books will be read to their children and to be given an opportunity to opt out.
You might think that this case would have been a no-brainer. But when the parents sought relief in court, they found themselves in an uphill battle. After losing in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, they appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit—and lost again. But with a tenacity worthy of the Founders who fought at such sacrifice for their freedom and ours, the parents did not give up, but appealed to the United States Supreme Court. And the rest, as Becket explains, is history.
On June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the parents have the right to opt their children out of the storybooks. In the Court’s decision, Justice Alito writing for the majority said, “Today’s decision recognizes that the right of parents ‘to direct the religious upbringing of their’ children would be an empty promise if it did not follow those children into the public school classroom.” He went on to say that the Court “cannot agree” with lower courts who have ruled otherwise for over fifty years.
This is a monumental win for parental rights in Maryland and across America. With this decision, the Supreme Court restored common sense and made clear that parents—not government—have the final say in how their children are raised.
It is a resounding affirmation of what Americans celebrate every Fourth of July.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…
This foundational truth would reverberate in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which likewise speaks of “the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” (Preamble). Expressly declaring that “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children” (Article 26(3)), the UDHR recognizes only one group unit as having rights, the unit that precedes the State and is entitled to protection by it: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State” (Article 16(3)).
But as seen with the Mahmoud case and with the Revolutionary War itself, proclaiming rights is only the first step in securing them, and the process is never complete. One astute observer called the Mahmoud case “a testament to the importance of standing up.” And according to Elder Matthew S. Holland, “With this country, there is entrusted to each generation a sacred charge: to cherish the hallowed inheritance of our liberties and steward those liberties for all generations to come.” It is a charge we cannot afford to ignore, for as Ronald Reagan warned,
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
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