The recent Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025) ruled that parents are entitled to a preliminary injunction, allowing their children to opt out of school instruction that uses LGBTQIA2S+ inclusive books. The ruling’s broader implications indicate that parents, not school officials, have the primary responsibility—indeed, the constitutional right—to guide the education of their children on complex, deeply fraught issues such as sexual education. Parents, after all, are uniquely positioned to understand their children’s maturity levels, their family’s values, and the appropriate timing for introducing sex. Schools should not overstep this boundary in a place that is meant for learning fundamental, straightforward subjects.
Parents may have a constitutional right to direct their children’s education, but in practice, exercising that right is an uphill battle. Schools increasingly act as though they—not parents—hold final authority over what children learn, imposing politicized curricula without consultation or consent. This struggle is compounded by the rise of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) within the broader “therapeutic complex,” which has transformed schools from places of instruction into centers of psychological and ideological conditioning. Education has given way to therapy, and therapy has been warped into activism. It’s now considered normal for teachers to introduce “gender theory” to six-year-olds—children so impressionable that they’ll believe the absurd claim that a boy can become a girl simply by wishing it so. (Read “Is It Time to Retire Social and Emotional Learning?” by Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars.)
[RELATED: “Feelings” Education—It Starts in Ed School]
Consider the harmful consequences of introducing radical ideology to young students, as demonstrated by Littlejohn v. Leon County (2025).
This March, school administrators met with Jeffrey and January Littlejohn’s 13-year-old daughter to set up a Confidential Gender Support Plan. This progressive plan allowed Littlejohn’s child to choose her new name, pronouns, restroom, and which sex to room with on school trips. Not only did administrators not inform her parents, but when the parents were present, they would call the child by her correct name and pronouns.
Matters worsened this July, when a federal court favored the Florida school. The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports that Judge Robin Rosenbaum states:
Defendants did not remove the Littlejohns’ child from their custody. And defendants did not force the child to attend a Student Support Plan meeting, to not invite the Littlejohns to that meeting, or to socially transition at school. In fact, defendants did not force the Littlejohns’ child to do anything at all. And perhaps most importantly, defendants did not act with intent to injure. To the contrary, they sought to help the child. Under these circumstances, even if the Littlejohns felt that defendants’ efforts to help their child were misguided or wrong, the mere fact that the school officials acted contrary to the Littlejohns’ wishes does not mean that their conduct ‘shocks the conscience’ in a constitutional sense.
The Littlejohn case demonstrates the real consequences that arise when schools stray from their academic mission and intrude on parents’ rights. The fact that school officials secretly implemented a “gender support plan” for a minor without parental consent underscores a broader and growing problem: educators increasingly believe they have the authority to intervene in a child’s life without notifying that child’s legal guardians. Such school-sanctioned overreach amounts to child abuse—and it should shock the American conscience, both constitutionally and morally.
Bureaucratic arrogance, the violation of parental authority, and the insistence on teaching blatant falsehoods as mandatory curriculum threaten the very foundation of education. Parents have every right to resist these abuses, but they will have to fight for that right at every step.
[RELATED: Florida Fought Leftist Indoctrination. So Why Is It Imposing It on Counselors?]
Ultimately, the Mahmoud v. Taylor decision sends a clear message to both schools and parents. What Florida’s schools did to the Littlejohns is impermissible. It is time for schools to refocus on their core mission: educating children academically. By respecting parental rights and ensuring curriculum transparency, we can restore trust, protect the innocence of childhood, and allow schools to truly excel at what they are meant to do: provide a high-quality education to their students.
But we will have hard work ahead of us to make the schools honest. They have demonstrated that they possess neither conscience nor shame. Parents and citizens must act to reform our schools, as they cannot trust school officials to act honestly. Parents must remake the schools themselves, rather than relying on bureaucrats and teachers to do it for them.
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“Defendants did not remove the Littlejohns’ child from their custody.”
That’s the next part of this — the schools call the child protective folk who grab the child.