School district misled court on why it banned opt-out for LGBTQ lessons, religious groups say

Newly revealed teacher-training materials and sworn affidavits show Maryland's Montgomery County Public Schools misled the federal court hearing a lawsuit by religious families against the district's no-exemptions policy for gender and sexuality instruction in the English Language Arts curriculum, a national Muslim group claims.

School officials in the affluent suburb bordering Washington, D.C. told a judge last month it rescinded opt-outs and parental notification this spring because of the logistical challenges created by too many families choosing to remove their children from the "Pride storybooks," which teach children as young as 3 about sex workers, kink, drag, gender transitions and prepubescent same-sex romance.

The school system didn't say how many opt-outs it received, in total or relative to previous years, that purportedly justified an exemption from state law requiring opt-out availability for instruction on "family life and human sexuality objectives." It has yet to give even a vague estimate to Just the News, and it later told MoCo360 it can't quantify the number.

A week after the Aug. 9 preliminary injunction hearing in the lawsuit by Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox parents, the district belatedly turned over the "Sample Student Call-Ins" and "Responding to Caregivers/Community Questions" documents cited in a Nov. 22 email from the Montgomery County Association of Administrators and Principals to county public school officials.