Conservative legal groups are using a narrowly focused Supreme Court ruling to challenge inclusive policies in public schools, according to a new report by Democracy Forward.
The 2025 Mahmoud v. Taylor decision held that a Maryland school district must provide advanced notice and opt-outs to parents before their children participate in lessons on religiously or ideologically sensitive issues including LGBTQ topics.
But Democracy Forward’s newly released study documented more than 50 coordinated legal cases nationwide designed to expand Mahmoud far beyond its intended scope.
Driven by a shared Christian nationalist vision for public education, Alliance Defending Freedom, Becket, and Defending Education are the right-wing groups behind the legal campaign outlined in the report using the high court ruling to limit the rights of LGBTQ people and other freedoms.
“The lawsuits citing Mahmoud cover a wide array of issues including vaccine requirements, health care access, federal funding, misgendering individuals and attempts to ban books and shape public school curricula. This follows a playbook this network has used before: Take a narrow ruling and expand it as broadly as possible,” Democracy Forward explained in “Back to School, and Back in Court: The weaponization of Mahmoud v. Taylor.”
While most courts have rejected the strategy, some have ruled in favor of litigation that frames issues as matters of free speech rather than free exercise, or by expanding beyond school settings.
“Though the narrow reading of Mahmoud is largely holding up in court, the right-wing movement continues to generate a steady stream of lawsuits designed to test the limits of the decision, and to pressure schools into preemptive compliance,” the report says.
One successful attempt to expand the ruling came this year in Mirabelli v. Bonta, a lawsuit challenging California’s policies protecting transgender students.
The Supreme Court’s emergency ruling in March blocked state policies prohibiting public schools from sharing information with parents about their children’s social transition or gender identity without student consent.
The court “held that a class of California parents was likely to succeed on two constitutional claims: First, that the policies against forced outing violated their right to ‘guide the religious development of their children’ under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause; and second, that the policies violated their fundamental parental right to ‘direct the upbringing and education of their children’ under the 14th Amendment.”
Despite having nothing to do with religiously objectionable curriculum, the ruling in the California case said Mahmoud was relevant because the facilitation of a child’s gender transition without parental consent violates parents’ free exercise rights.
The fact Mirabelli didn’t involve education instruction materials as Mahmoud illustrates how right-wing legal groups are stretching the Maryland case is being its intended purpose, the report notes. “Mirabelli represents an alarming expansion of Mahmoud beyond the curricular setting and risks triggering abuse or rejection of transgender youth who are forcibly outed to their parents.”
Elena Kagan
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan chastised the majority for improperly using the court’s shadow docket in considering a case without sufficient briefing and involving novel legal theories.
The dissent noted the “‘ink on that decision (Mahmoud) is barely dry, and courts have just begun to consider its meaning and reach,’ making this shadow-docket intervention especially premature,” the report says.
The report also highlights E.K. v. Department of Defense Education Activity in which a dozen students from military families sued to force the Pentagon to return nearly 600 race- and gender-related books it had removed from library shelves.
But conservatives tried again to widen previous rulings to maintain the ban.
“Defending Education’s friend-of-the-court brief supporting the DoDEA’s decision invoked both Mirabelli and Mahmoud to argue that removing ‘objectionable’ material from schools protects parental rights by making opt-outs unnecessary,” the report says.
A district court didn’t buy that argument, a possible indication that Mahmoud is not useful in censorship cases, the report notes. The case is now before a federal appeals court.
In 2026, courts have rejected “the great majority” of attempts to widen Mahmoud. That suggests the power of the right-wing legal movement lies not in the courts but in filing lawsuits to pressure school districts to comply, Democracy Forward says.
“This means the most consequential battles will often be fought not in the courtroom but in school boards, statehouses and through the choices individual school districts make before any case is filed — and that a coordinated response across local advocacy, litigation, inclusive messaging, and protective legislation is more important than ever,” the report advises. “In this country, there is a version of public school education that both honors the religious beliefs of students and protects and uplifts LGBTQ students — one need not be sacrificed for the other. Preserving that possibility, against an effort designed to foreclose it, is the work ahead.”