Supremes expected to side with parents over Maryland school board

Last Updated 4/23/2025


Not surprisingly, we at the Rhea Heritage Preservation Foundation tend to look at school legal cases through the lens of the 1925 Scopes Trial. 

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case with national implications. The Supremes are considering whether the Montgomery County, Maryland, school board has the right to force its elementary students to sit through the reading of LGBTQ+ friendly how-to manuals and love stories. The parents, on the other hand, are arguing that they have a right, on religious grounds, to opt their children out of classes that use these books.

Who has the right to determine what your children learn in school? Professional educators or you as parents? In 1925 William Jennings Bryan and the prosecution argued that the parents, and by extension their elected representatives, had the right to say what their children would be taught in public schools. John Thomas Scopes and his defense team argued that parents should bow to the opinions of “so-called experts” when it came to whether children should be taught about evolution.

Want to know more about the Scopes Trial? Visit Scopes100.com for more information and come visit us in Dayton, TN, in July for an historically accurate rendition of the “World’s Most Famous Trial.”



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