We argue, in an amicus brief filed in Mahmoud v. Knight (now pending before the Supreme Court), that the Free Exercise Clause doesn't secure a presumptive right to opt out of K-12 public school curriculum elements to which the parents or children have a religious objection. Many thanks to I. Rodgin Cohen, Amanda Flug Davidoff, Daniel J. Richardson, and Harrison J. Tanzola (Sullivan & Cromwell LLP), who wrote the brief on our behalf. Here's the Summary of Argument:
Petitioners ask this Court to hold that parents have a constitutional right to interfere with the routine curricular decisions of public schools. Whether this Court answers that question by applying its existing free-exercise precedents or—as members of this Court have recently suggested—by considering analogies to free-speech doctrine, see Fulton v. City of Phila., 593 U.S. 522, 543 (2021) (Barrett, J., concurring); id. at 565 n.28 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment), the answer is the same: The First Amendment does not shield public-school students from the mere exposure to ideas that conflict with their personal views, whether secular or religious.
Every day, thousands of public schools throughout the United States make countless decisions about the best way to educate their students. Those decisions reflect the input of educators, parents, and local communities. They thus incorporate competing views about both the materials that should be included in public-school curricula and the role of public education in civil society. In a country as diverse as the United States, those decisions also often expose students to ideas that may be in tension with their deeply held beliefs.
