Maryland parents were dealt a blow last week when a district judge ruled against an opt-out policy for LGBTQ curricula in Montgomery County Public Schools. School started today, which means that students in pre-K through fifth grade cannot opt out of discussions of books that reference transgenderism, gender-ideology notions of pronoun usage, and sexuality.

Grace Morrison, a Catholic mother in the district, talked to National Review last week about the court case. The Morrison family was referenced heavily in the judge’s ruling on Thursday, mainly because Morrison and her husband’s ten-year-old daughter has Down syndrome and attention deficit disorder. Their daughter’s learning disabilities, the family said, make it “practically impossible for [her family] to contradict” LGBTQ lessons.

From the court case:

Because of their daughter’s learning challenges, she does not “understand or differentiate instructions from her teachers and her parents” and “will not be able to understand how or why” the Morrisons disagree with the content of the storybooks.

To which the Biden-appointed judge, Deborah Boardman, said:

The Morrisons have not shown the use of the storybooks will result in their daughter’s indoctrination. She may be uniquely vulnerable to indoctrination due to her neurodivergence, but on the current record, the Morrisons still have not established that indoctrination is likely to occur. . . . That the Morrisons’ child cannot distinguish between what her parents and teachers instruct does not convert the teachers’ instruction into indoctrination—nothing suggests she will be pressured to affirm or agree with the views presented in the storybooks.

The judge goes on to say that the family doesn’t face “any coercion to violate their sacred duty to raise their child in their faith,” adding that “the no opt-out policy does not prevent the Morrisons from taking the action required by their religion—trying to teach their daughter their beliefs.” The court didn’t acknowledge the added difficulty of that attempt for parents with neurodivergent children. It’s confusing enough for children ages four to ten to learn about sensitive gender and sexuality topics; it’s even more confusing for young children with learning disabilities.

Despite the setback in court, Maryland parents plan to continue their fight to restore opt-out.