Montgomery County’s unneeded Supreme Court fight

 

“What’s the big deal?” This was the very pertinent question posed by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. during Tuesday’s oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor. Why has the defendant — the Montgomery County, Maryland, school district — come before the Supreme Court with what should have been a minor administrative issue?

In 2022, Montgomery County introduced into its language arts curriculum a set of books that affirm LGBTQ+ identities. As with other material that might conflict with families’ religious values, such as sex education, the district allowed parents an opt-out. Then, it abruptly rescinded that option and refused to reconsider, even after some parents sued.

This is how Alan Schoenfeld, the school district’s lawyer, ended up in court trying to explain to Alito why the district was unable to accommodate parents with religious objections. “The plaintiffs here are not asking the school to change its curriculum,” Alito pointed out. “They’re just saying, look, we want out. Why isn’t that feasible? What is the big deal about allowing them to opt out of this?”

Schoenfeld tried to argue that the administrative burden was too great but, when asked why it was so much greater than the opt-outs available for health class, he appeared to struggle, finally responding that those opt-outs were mandated by state law, whereas the reading opt-outs were not...

https://wapo.st/4lM34Ok

NYT Opinion: My School District Could Have Avoided This Supreme Court Case

...I begrudge the public money wasted on expensive lawyers. I can’t fathom that we squandered so much energy fighting over storybooks even as our kids’ test scores foundered, absenteeism soared and student mental health slumped in the wake of the pandemic.

I can’t decide which conceit is more delusional: The school district grandstanding about social tolerance while forcing a minority of religious families to engage with books they consider immoral or the religious parents claiming that they can’t properly rear their children in faith if the kids get exposed to a few picture books. Both positions, it seems to me, rest on a cartoonishly inflated sense of school’s influence on children. And both seek an ideologically purified classroom while underestimating the sweep of ideas and information kids absorb simply by existing in our world.

Most of all, I feel that our community’s failure to resolve a thoroughly predictable tension with the time-tested tools of straight talk, compromise and extending one another a little grace has made for a demoralizing spectacle. And I can’t help but notice that our district, in its clumsy efforts to force tolerance, might have given the Supreme Court an opening to repress L.G.B.T.Q.-related speech in the nation’s schools...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/opinion/lgbtq-books-supreme-court.html?searchResultPosition=3

Supreme Court Seems in Favor of Deaf Student’s Right to Sue School District Under the ADA

The U.S. Supreme Court appeared inclined to rule in favor of a deaf Michigan student on a key legal question in his lawsuit alleging that his school district failed to provide him adequate educational assistance for 12 years in violation of federal disability law.

Justice Elena Kagan said during the arguments Wednesday that it appeared that the student, Miguel Luna Perez, “did everything right” by accepting a settlement from his school district on his educational claims under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and then filing a lawsuit seeking monetary damages under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“What should Miguel have done differently from what he did do in this case?” Kagan asked the lawyer representing the 3,000-student Sturgis school district in Sturgis, Mich.

The justices heard 90 minutes of arguments in Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools (Case No. 21-887) involving Luna Perez, who is now 27 and was in the courtroom along with several sign-language interpreters to help him comprehend. His underlying lawsuit contends that the Sturgis district failed to provide him with trained sign-language interpreters for years and that he has suffered emotional distress and economic harms from his diminished abilities to communicate...

Supreme Court Seems in Favor of Deaf Student's Right to Sue School District Under the ADA (edweek.org)

Sup. Ct. Sotomayor to Montgomery County Prosecutor: “Prosecutors fall short of this task, and therefore do a grave disservice to the people in whose name they litigate, when they permit themselves to enjoy unfair trial advantages at defendants’ expense. Here, regardless of the reason for their acquisition of Kaur’s privileged information … the prosecutors should have recused themselves from participating in Kaur’s second trial as a matter of professional conscience.”

...Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a written statement, said she agreed with the high court’s decision not to hear Raminder Kaur’s appeal. However, that did not absolve the Montgomery County prosecutors of having gone forward with Kaur’s second prosecution after having seen the privileged documents when Kaur waged a successful ineffective assistance of counsel challenge to her first conviction, Sotamayor added.

“Prosecutors wield an immense amount of power, and they do so in the name of the state itself,” Sotomayor wrote.

“That unique privilege comes with the exceptional responsibility to ensure that the criminal justice system indeed serves the ends of justice,” Sotomayor added. “Prosecutors fall short of this task, and therefore do a grave disservice to the people in whose name they litigate, when they permit themselves to enjoy unfair trial advantages at defendants’ expense. Here, regardless of the reason for their acquisition of Kaur’s privileged information … the prosecutors should have recused themselves from participating in Kaur’s second trial as a matter of professional conscience.”

The prosecutors’ failure to recuse “casts a troubling and unnecessary shadow over Kaur’s conviction and sentence to life imprisonment,” Sotomayor wrote...

https://thedailyrecord.com/2020/10/05/supreme-court-denies-germantown-murderers-appeal/