The Supreme Court just legalized censorship in public schools
By Keith D. Elston, Legal Director Kentucky Youth Law Project, Inc. Friday, June 27, 2025
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court made a decision that should alarm anyone who believes public education ought to serve all children, not just the ones whose parents shout the loudest.
In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Court ruled that school districts must accommodate parents who object to LGBTQ+ literature in school libraries on the grounds of their religion. The ruling requires schools to provide advance notice and opt-out opportunities for materials that may conflict with a family's religious views. In plain terms, it lets a handful of parents decide which stories the rest of us are allowed to read.
Let’s be honest about what’s really going on here. This isn’t about religious liberty. It’s about censorship. And the Court just gave it constitutional cover.
The decision hands power to anyone who believes that simply acknowledging LGBTQ+ lives is inappropriate for the classroom. That’s not protecting kids: that’s erasing them. It tells schools to tread carefully or risk being dragged into court. The likely result? Queer books quietly disappear from the shelves. Not because they’re harmful, but because they’re controversial. Or worse, because they exist at all.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent gets to the heart of the issue. “The Constitution does not permit schools to become battlegrounds for ideological purification,” she wrote. But with this ruling, that’s exactly what we risk becoming. Instead of being places where young people learn about the world and each other, schools may now become spaces where only the most sanitized, inoffensive, and increasingly narrow stories are allowed to survive.
This is not a mere hypothetical concern. LGBTQ+ students already face disproportionately high rates of bullying, isolation, and mental health struggles. Representation in school libraries isn’t a luxury—it’s a lifeline. Taking away those stories doesn’t protect anyone. It sends a message that queer identities are something to be hidden, debated, or silenced. That they don’t belong. That they are dangerous.
The First Amendment is meant to protect us from government overreach, not to be wielded as a bludgeon to suppress ideas some people dislike. And yet, this ruling turns that principle on its head. It elevates individual offense over shared civic values. It says the fear of discomfort should dictate the boundaries of what we teach, read, and understand.
This isn’t a win for parental rights. It’s a loss for every student who deserves to see their world reflected in a book. It’s a loss for teachers and librarians who want to provide an honest and inclusive education. And it’s a loss for the very idea of public schooling as a space where we prepare kids for life in a pluralistic democracy, not a curated echo chamber.
But, if we are being honest, isn't the destruction of public schools a primary goal of Christian Nationalists' anti-education, anti-diversity, anti-inclusion, anti-democracy movement? To turn the United States, a nation founded by people fleeing religious intolerance, into a theocratic country where only the "right" kind of Christians get to decide what those who don't believe and see the world PRECISELY as they do can say who they can love, where they can live, what jobs they can hold, what books they can read? Frankly, that's my idea of hell on earth, and it's certainly not how I want my children to be taught. But perhaps that's their goal. Maybe the only parental rights that truly matter now are those rights that harm anyone who disagrees with them. We should all be angry about this. Because what the Court sanctioned today isn’t neutrality—it’s capitulation. And if we want our schools to be places of honesty, courage, and empathy, we will have to fight harder than ever to maintain that integrity.
U.S. Supreme Court's Skrmetti decision is a direct assault on civil liberties, parents' rights, and human dignity
By Keith D. Elston, Legal Director Kentucky Youth Law Project, Inc. Wednesday, June 18, 2025
The United States Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti is not only a grave miscarriage of justice but also a direct assault on civil liberties, parental rights, and human dignity. It reflects a chilling willingness to prioritize right-wing misinformation over medical science, legal precedent, and, most alarmingly, the lives of transgender and nonbinary children.
This ruling, cloaked in the language of judicial restraint, is anything but neutral. It empowers state legislatures to intrude into the most personal decisions a family can make: the health and well-being of their child. It allows politicians — not doctors, not parents — to decide what care a child can receive, and in doing so, denies families the right to pursue evidence-based, life-affirming medical treatment for their children.
Let us be absolutely clear: gender-affirming healthcare is not experimental. It is recognized and endorsed by every major medical and psychological association in the United States. By upholding bans on such care, the Court has declared that transgender youth, already some of the most vulnerable in our society, are undeserving of the same rights to physical and mental health care given to others.
But this decision goes beyond just trans kids. If the Court can deny gender-affirming care today, what's to stop it from blocking access to reproductive care, as it did in Dobbs, tomorrow? From taking away the rights of older adults to Medicare or Medicaid? From targeting any group whose health needs don't fit the political agenda?
We must acknowledge the threat: this ruling is not an isolated incident. It's part of a larger effort to redefine who deserves care. If we let any government decide whose bodies deserve dignity and protection, we've abandoned the principles of equality and freedom that this country is built on.
So, to those who ask why we care about such a "small minority," consider this: your healthcare is next. When rights are stripped from the margins, the center eventually collapses. Today it's trans children; tomorrow, it could be your daughter, your parent, or you.
Healthcare is a civil and human right ... for everyone.