Some quick thoughts occasioned by Josh Blackman's post on coercion in Mahmoud v. Taylor, last Term's parental rights case.
As readers will recall, Mahmoud held that a Maryland school district violated the Free Exercise Clause when it rescinded an opt-out policy that had allowed parents to have their children excused from elementary school lessons featuring LGBTQ+-inclusive storybooks. The Court reasoned that the storybooks, along with classroom discussions that encouraged teachers to reinforce their messages, imposed psychological pressure on students to accept a normative view of sexuality—one that directly conflicted with the religious teachings the parents sought to instill. That pressure, the majority concluded, amounted to a substantial burden on the parents' religious exercise.
In a post yesterday, I noted what seemed like an ideological reversal in the case. In the school prayer context—for example, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District—it's typically progressives who emphasize the dangers of subtle coercion and impressionable students, while conservatives downplay those concerns. In Mahmoud, the roles flipped. The conservative majority focused on the psychological pressure placed on young children by state-endorsed messaging, while the progressive justices appeared less troubled by that dynamic.
