When the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Mahmoud v. Taylor this summer, liberal parents and advocates were understandably alarmed. The Court sided with the plaintiffs, parents from Montgomery County, Maryland, who wanted their young children excused from reading and discussing books on sexual orientation and gender identity. In so doing, it recognized a constitutional right to opt out of specific classroom content that conflicts with one’s religious beliefs and imposed an obligation on school districts to proactively notify parents when such a conflict might occur in classroom instruction.

This new right will be burdensome to administer and opens the door to bad-faith attempts to abuse accommodation requests. But it’s also an opportunity to recommit to public education’s mission of serving all young people, including those whose religious beliefs are out of step with local culture. If public schools are to remain shared civic institutions, liberals must absorb a lesson: Inclusion cannot mean coercion, and pluralism—when practiced seriously—is not a dodge but a democratic ethic.

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The case began in 2022, when Montgomery County Public Schools introduced a set of storybooks in kindergarten through fifth grade to expand representation and prompt classroom conversations about gender identity and sexual orientation. At the time, MCPS granted a request from parents to be notified of the upcoming lessons and allowed to opt-out.