Maryland County Urges Appeals Court to Uphold LGBTQ Book Policy

Maryland’s largest public school system says its policy requiring students to be present for classroom lessons involving LGBTQ-themed books doesn’t infringe parents’ religious freedom rights.

A district court properly rejected the parents’ bid for a preliminary injunction allowing their children to be excused from English Language Arts instruction with the storybooks, Montgomery County Public Schools said Tuesday in a brief to a federal appeals court.

“Like all other books in the ELA curriculum,” the storybooks featuring LGBTQ+ characters “impart critical reading skills through engaging, age-appropriate stories,” the school told the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in a ...