Last week, the U.S. Department of Education released legal guidance on what it calls “constitutionally protected prayer and religious expression in public elementary and secondary schools.”
It's not news to parents that many public-school classrooms teach and preach everything from transgender pronouns to anti-white ideology, but a student’s constitutional right to freedom of religion is often ridiculed, vilified, and even banned.
“Our Constitution safeguards the free exercise of religion as one of the guiding principles of our republic,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said, “and we will vigorously protect that right in America’s public schools.”
The new DOE document follows similar legal guidance issued by the Biden administration. That guidance was issued in 2023, after the Kennedy v Bremerton School District decision, which upheld a football coach’s right to pray on the field after home games.
The new guidance takes into account a second related ruling, this one from 2025, that strengthens individual liberties even more. That decision, Mahmoud v. Taylor, defended parental rights and ripped a public school board that refused to allow an “opt out” when homosexual-themed and transgender-themed books were read to children during a classroom story time.
Holly Randall, a First Liberty Institute attorney, told the “Washington Watch” program the Mahmoud case expanded the legal rights of parents to oversee the religious upbringing of their own children.
“It says that just because you choose to send your kid to a public school,” Randall explained, “does not mean you forfeit your rights as their parents to direct the religious direction of their lives.”
The high court’s 6-3 decision, announced in June of last year, upheld the rights of Maryland parents – Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox – who fought the Montgomery County School Board over reading books to their children such as Uncle Bobby’s Wedding and Pride Puppy.
The liberal Maryland school district, located in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., made headlines for working with parents to grant an "opt out" option but then snatching it away under left-wing pressure to do so.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said what the parents were seeking “is not the right to micromanage the public school curriculum, but rather to have their children opt out of a particular educational requirement that burdens their well-established right ‘to direct the religious upbringing of their children' under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment,” Scotus Blog reported.
Asked if the new guidance is strong enough to stand up to potential lawsuits, the First Liberty attorney predicted it would hold up in court.
“The good thing about this guidance is that it's well-analyzed, well-footnoted, well-prepared,” Randall stated. “What it says is exactly what the Supreme Court has already told us: students, teachers, parents have constitutional rights.”
