Commentary

As California families prepare for another school year, many parents will encounter permission slips for field trips, sports participation, and various school activities. But there’s one permission slip most parents won’t see. It might be the most important one of all.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor has sparked conversations about parental rights in education, with the court ruling that schools cannot deny parents notice and opt-out rights for curriculum and materials that conflict with their religious beliefs, especially on topics that relate to gender and sexuality. But what many Californians don’t realize is that this issue was settled in our state nearly a century ago.

The Golden State has long recognized that parents, not schools, hold the fundamental right to guide their children’s moral and educational development.

In 1921, the California Supreme Court faced a case that sounds remarkably familiar today. In Hardwick v. Board of School Trustees, parents objected to mandatory dance classes that violated their religious convictions. When the school refused to provide alternatives and expelled the children for nonparticipation, the parents sued and won.

The court’s ruling was unambiguous: As long as parents’ requests “relate to matters in rearing and education of their children,” are “not offensive to the moral well-being of the children,” and are not “inconsistent with the best interests of society,” public schools must accommodate them. To rule otherwise, the court warned, would subvert “the home life so essential to the safety and security of society.”

Which raises an important question: If the California Supreme Court established that parents have the right to opt their children out of instruction they find objectionable in 1921, what legal authority did lawmakers think that they had to eliminate those choices decades later? The answer, it turns out, is that they didn’t.

The Hardwick decision established that children cannot be compelled to participate in instruction that their parents find objectionable, whether for religious reasons or otherwise. This isn’t just about health education or controversial topics; it applies to any curriculum that conflicts with a family’s values or beliefs, including the values of families who are agnostic or practice no religion at all.

Both the U.S. Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court understand something that modern educators and legislators sometimes forget: Schools exist to serve families, not replace them. When districts implement policies that exclude parents from their children’s educational experience, they violate both the legal foundations and basic trust that make public education possible.

This overreach isn’t theoretical. Across California, parents have encountered various levels of resistance when seeking to opt their children out of programming they find objectionable.

Some districts have creative interpretations of state and federal law and have adopted policies explicitly prohibiting notice and opt-outs for certain content. But the recent Mahmoud decision is explicit that blanket denials of parental opt-outs violate the First Amendment when it comes to families’ religious beliefs, including restrictions on opting out of “LGBTQ+ inclusive” books and curriculum.

Here’s what’s crucial: The right to guide our children’s education isn’t exclusively religious. Both Hardwick and Mahmoud recognize that parents have legitimate interests in their children’s moral and philosophical development that extend beyond formal religious doctrine. Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, or secular families with strong convictions about gender and sexuality all deserve the same respect for their parental authority.

As students return to classrooms this fall, school districts must acknowledge these legal realities. Parents have the right to know when their children will encounter potentially controversial content, regardless of the subject area or the time of day at which it is presented. This includes materials addressing gender identity, sexual orientation, family structures, or other topics that may conflict with families’ values.

Districts cannot escape their obligations by integrating controversial content throughout the curriculum or labeling it as something other than “health education.” The U.S. Supreme Court’s majority stressed transparency and accommodations, not creative work-arounds designed to circumvent parental rights. They also made it clear that schools need a policy to alert parents to the possibility of objectionable material.

This ruling isn’t about turning schools into political battlegrounds or undermining public education. It’s about restoring the partnership between families and schools that makes quality education possible while respecting the wishes of parents to raise their children according to their own values and convictions. Parents and teachers should be allies, not foes, in the children’s learning process.

School boards and administrators would be wise to proactively address these issues and adopt notification and opt-out policies now rather than wait for legal challenges. But parents don’t have to wait for their local school board to act. They can find a sample opt-out letter to send to their school at the California Policy Center’s Parent Union website.

Ultimately, teachers and administrators who find themselves caught between conflicting directives should remember: Their legal and ethical obligation is to serve the children in their care, which means respecting the parents who entrust those children to their care each day.