(AUSTIN, Texas) — The measles outbreak in western Texas has now reached 624 cases, with 27 new infections confirmed over the last five days.
Nearly all of the cases are among unvaccinated individuals or among those whose vaccination status is unknown, according to new data published by the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) on Tuesday.
Currently, 10 cases are among residents who have been vaccinated with one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, while 12 cases are among those vaccinated with two doses.
At least 64 measles patients have been hospitalized so far, according to the DSHS, with the majority of cases presenting in children and teenagers between ages 5 and 17, followed by children ages 4 and under.
Gaines County, which borders New Mexico, remains the epicenter of the outbreak, with 386 cases confirmed so far, DSHS data shows.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — A panel of appeals judges expressed skepticism with elements of the Trump administration’s transgender service member ban, peppering a Department of Justice lawyer with questions Tuesday morning about the basis for the ban and justification for blocking anyone with gender dysphoria from service without making individualized determinations.
DOJ attorney Jason Manion attempted to justify the policy by arguing that transgender troops lessen the readiness of the U.S. military and that the policy falls under a “core area of presidential power.”
“The military has determined that this policy will increase the readiness and effectiveness of the military and, in fact, that not being able to enact it would be harmful to the military,” he argued.
Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, pushed back on the assertion by highlighting that the Pentagon did not provide concrete evidence or research to show that transgender members of the military are less lethal or less ready for combat.
“If the military said people with red hair are just too fragile and vulnerable, we are going to kick them all out of the military and we are going to not allow any of them ever to join — we have no evidence of that, but we think they’re a threat to military preparedness, to unit cohesion, and too costly, and so we’re just going to kick them out, is that rational enough under military deference?” she asked.
Manion attempted to argue that gender dysphoria is “marked by severe clinical distress or impaired functioning,” but Pillard noted that the military already screens soldiers for depression and suicidal ideation.
Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both Trump appointees who also served in his first administration, also raised concerns that the policy treats soldiers the same based on their sex, rather than allow individualized determinations.
“Should the military be required to take an individualized determination?” Rao asked. “Is the decision not to make individualized determinations some indication that this is treating people the same based on the transgender status?”
Shannon Minter, an attorney for the group of 32 transgender service members and recruits who challenged the policy, urged the court to stop the ban from taking effect, arguing the Trump administration has failed to prove why thousands of transgender soldiers deserve to be declared unfit for service.
“The government have a high burden here, and it has not been able to meet any part of it,” Minter said.
The group sued the Trump administration over the policy in January, and at least three different federal judges have since blocked the ban from taking effect.
“The Court’s opinion is long, but its premise is simple. In the self-evident truth that ‘all people are created equal, all means all. Nothing more. And certainly nothing less,” Judge Ana Reyes wrote in a ruling last month blocking the policy.
The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to overrule Reyes’ decision, arguing that gender dysphoria “limits deployability and imposes additional costs on the military” and is “not compatible with military readiness and lethality.”
Lawyers with the DOJ have argued that the courts should defer to military leadership about the best way to run the armed services.
“Plaintiffs offer no sound basis for concluding that the line the military has once again drawn falls outside constitutional bounds,” DOJ lawyers wrote.
But lawyers representing the transgender service members have pushed back on the Pentagon’s claim, arguing the Trump administration has provided no evidence of the harm stemming from the policy.
They argued that allowing the policy to take effect would “trigger an explosive and harmful trip wire, causing reputational, professional, and constitutional harm that can never be fully undone.”
(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in New York is set to hear arguments Tuesday after he temporarily ruled that detained migrants being held in the Southern District of New York could not be deported without due process.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled earlier this month that several alleged Venezuelan gang members could not be deported under the Alien Enemies Act without them first receiving notice and an opportunity for a hearing.
The Trump administration last month touched off a legal battle when it invoked the Alien Enemies Act — an 18th century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process — to deport two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States.
An official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged that “many” of the men lack criminal records in the United States — but said that “the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose” and “demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision earlier this month, allowed the Trump administration to resume deportations of alleged migrant gang members under the Alien Enemies Act — but said detainees must be given due process to challenge their removal.
Judge Hellerstein, in his temporary order blocking the deportations, suggested his decision was meant to define the parameters of the Supreme Court’s opinion.
The relief Hellerstein granted is limited to approximately a dozen migrants currently detained in a few New York counties.
Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia are requesting a conference Tuesday to address what they say is the Trump administration’s “failure to comply” with a court order granting expedited discovery in the case.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis last week slammed Justice Department attorneys over their inaction over Abrego Garcia’s wrongful detention and ordered government officials to testify under oath through expedited discovery.
In a letter to the judge Monday night from both the government and Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, lawyers for Abrego Garcia said that the Trump administration has responded to their discovery requests by producing “nothing of substance” and providing interrogatory responses that are “non-responsive.”
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys said the administration has claimed state secrets privilege and governmental privilege “without any foundation for doing so.”
The attorneys also said they invited government officials to meet and confer several times, but the officials declined to meet until Monday evening, “on the eve of depositions.”
Department of Homeland Security Acting General Counsel Joseph Mazzara was scheduled to be deposed Tuesday morning, according to the letter.
The government, in the same letter, said they have “put forward a good-faith effort to provide appropriate responses to both Plaintiffs’ Interrogatories and Request for Production.”
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who has been living with his wife and children in Maryland, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution — after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13.
The Trump administration, while acknowledging that Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in error, has said that his alleged MS-13 affiliation makes him ineligible to return to the United States. His wife and attorney have denied that he is an MS-13 member.
Judge Xinis early this month ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, and the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that ruling, “with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
The government, in Monday’s letter to the judge, said that any requirement for a more detailed response on the legal basis for Abrego Garcia’s confinement “would be wholly inappropriate and an invasion of diplomatic discussions.”
“Upon Abrego’s repatriation to El Salvador, his detention was no longer a matter of the United States’ confinement, but a matter belonging to the government of El Salvador — which has been explained to the Plaintiffs repeatedly,” the government said. “Their insistence on obtaining any information on ‘diplomatic discussions’ is a facially unwarranted and inappropriate intrusion into the diplomatic process — a matter which the Supreme Court specifically reserved to the Government’s province.”
In a separate filing, attorneys for Abrego Garcia included as an exhibit the government’s objections to the plaintiff’s first set of expedited interrogatories, in which the government says that “disclosing the details of any diplomatic discussions regarding Mr. Abrego Garcia at this time could negatively impact any outcome.”
In the exhibit, the government acknowledges the $6 million that has been made available to the government of El Salvador to be used for its “law enforcement needs,” including for the detention of the Venezuelan migrants that were sent to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison.
“The United States has not provided any specific assistance with respect to the detention of Abrego Garcia or any other Salvadoran national,” the government said.
(WASHINGTON) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday strongly denied that what he shared over a second group chat on the Signal messaging app were classified war plans about imminent U.S. airstrikes targeting Houthi militants in Yemen, and blamed former staffers for leaking, accusing them of going to the news media with new information to “sabotage” Trump’s agenda.
Hegseth and other administration officials have insisted that the information about those airstrikes that was shared earlier with another Signal group established by national security adviser Mike Waltz was not classified.
On Tuesday, Hegseth continued to make that case as questions have been raised about how he shared similar information with a smaller Signal group that sources told ABC News included his wife, brother, and personal attorney.
“I look at war plans every single day. What was shared over Signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal unclassified coordination for media coordination other things. That’s what I’ve said from the beginning,” Hegseth said in a live interview from the Pentagon on “Fox & Friends.”
Sources familiar with the chat had earlier told ABC News that Hegseth had established the Signal group with family and friends during his Senate confirmation process. Hegseth was not asked in the interview why he had shared the information with that group of close personal advisers that included his wife, who is not a U.S. government employee.
The defense secretary also criticized former close advisers fired last week as part of what he said was leak investigation that followed news reports about military plans for the Panama Canal, Elon Musk’s planned visit to the Pentagon and other developments.
“It led to some unfortunate places, people I have known for quite some time, but it’s not my job to protect them,” said Hegseth. “It’s my job to protect national security the president of the United States and let the investigation go where it is. So, when that evidence is gathered sufficiently, and this has all happened very quickly, it will be handed over to DOJ, and those people will be prosecuted if necessary.”
The former staffers include Dan Caldwell, a longtime close adviser to Hegseth, Darin Selnick, who was the Pentagon’s deputy chief of staff, and Colin Carroll, who served as chief of staff for the deputy secretary of defense and on Tuesday Hegseth claimed, without evidence, that they were responsible for news leaks intended to “sabotage” the Trump administration’s agenda for the Pentagon.
“Those folks who are leaking, who have been pushed out of the building, are now attempting to leak and sabotage the president’s agenda and what we’re doing, and that’s unfortunate,” said Hegseth.
“So, once a leaker, always a leaker, often a leaker, and so we look for leakers, because we take it very seriously, and we will do the investigation,” said Hegseth.
At the same time, Hegseth left open the possibility that the ongoing investigation might exonerate the very people he was accusing.
“If those people are exonerated, fantastic,” said Hegseth. “We don’t think, based on what we understand, that it’s going to be a good day for a number of those individuals because of what was found in the investigation.”
On Monday, in a video interview with Tucker Carlson, Caldwell vigorously denied that he had leaked information and said he and the other two officials did not know why they had been fired.
Also on Monday, Hegseth blamed “anonymous smears” and President Donald Trump dismissed any concerns, said he has “great confidence” in Hegseth..
“Here we go again. Just a waste of time. He is doing a great job,” Trump said of Hegseth.
The recent disclosures of the new Signal group and the dismissal of top advisers have raised questions about Hegseth’s judgment among a large number of congressional Democrats who have called for Hegseth to step down from his post.
On Monday, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, and a former Air Force general, became the first Republican to suggest that Hegseth should be removed as defense secretary.
“If it’s true that he had another chat with his family, about the missions against the Houthis, it’s totally unacceptable,” he told Politico.
“It looks like there’s a meltdown going on,” Bacon said. “There’s a lot — a lot — of smoke coming out of the Pentagon, and I got to believe there’s some fire there somewhere.”
On Tuesday, Hegseth claimed that critics of his Pentagon agenda have “come after me from day one” but said his focus would remain on carrying out his goals at the Pentagon.
“I’m here because President Trump asked me to bring warfighting back to the Pentagon every single day,” said Hegseth.
“That is our focus, and if people don’t like it, they can come after me. No worries. I’m standing right here,” Hegseth said. “The warfighters are behind us. Our enemies know they’re on notice. Our allies know we’re behind them, and that in this dangerous world for the American people is what it’s all about.”
“No, I haven’t blinked, and I won’t blink because this job is too big and too important for the American people,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan has agreed to step aside, clearing the way for President Donald Trump on Tuesday to install his nominee as interim United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, yet another shake-up for the nation’s most prominent federal prosecutor’s office
Matthew Podolsky, who has agreed to step down, took over for Danielle Sassoon, who in February resigned in protest of the Justice Department’s order to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
Sassoon had been named interim U.S. attorney by Trump when the president fired Edward Kim, who assumed the role during the change in administrations.
Trump’s nominee, Jay Clayton, will serve in an interim capacity for up to four months until confirmed by the Senate or appointed by federal judges in Manhattan. Clayton was the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term in office.
Before leading the SEC, Clayton was a partner at New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell and worked with Wall Street firms and other corporations to navigate federal regulations.
Trump tried to install Clayton during his first term but then-U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman refused to resign until then-Attorney General Bill Barr agreed to replace him with a trusted deputy.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer recently signaled his intent to block Clayton’s nomination over frustration with Trump, who he said “has no fidelity to the law.”
“Donald Trump has made clear he has no fidelity to the law and intends to use the Justice Department, the U.S. Attorney offices and law enforcement as weapons to go after his perceived enemies,” Schumer said in a statement last week. “Such blatant and depraved political motivations are deeply corrosive to the rule of law and leaves me deeply skeptical of the Donald Trump’s intentions for these important positions. For that reason, I will not return the blue slip for the U.S. Attorney nominees for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.”
By naming Clayton as his interim choice, Trump is likely able to get his way without putting Clayton through a confirmation process.
After 120 days, judges in the Southern District of New York can vote to appoint Clayton to the job until there’s a confirmed nominee, and Trump could simply name no one else.
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration’s ban on transgender service members faces its next legal test Tuesday when a federal appeals court considers the legality of the policy.
A group of 32 transgender service members and recruits sued the Trump administration over the policy in January, and at least three different federal judges have since blocked the ban from taking effect.
“The Court’s opinion is long, but its premise is simple. In the self-evident truth that ‘all people are created equal, all means all. Nothing more. And certainly nothing less,” Judge Ana Reyes wrote in a ruling last month blocking the policy.
The Trump administration has asked the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to overrule Judge Reyes’ decision, arguing that gender dysphoria “limits deployability and imposes additional costs on the military” and is “not compatible with military readiness and lethality.”
Lawyers with the Department of Justice have argued that the courts should defer to military leadership about the best way to run the armed services.
“Plaintiffs offer no sound basis for concluding that the line the military has once again drawn falls outside constitutional bounds,” DOJ lawyers wrote.
But lawyers representing the transgender service members have pushed back on the Pentagon’s claim, arguing the Trump administration has provided no evidence of the harm stemming from the policy.
They argued that allowing the policy to take effect would “trigger an explosive and harmful trip wire, causing reputational, professional, and constitutional harm that can never be fully undone.”
The appeal will be considered by a federal judiciary reshaped by the Trump administration, with two of the three judges hearing Tuesday’s appeal not only nominated by Trump but also previously served in his first administration.
(WASHINGTON) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will move to phase out the remaining eight artificial food dyes from America’s food supply within two years, his department announced Monday, a significant escalation in his fight to rid the country’s food of additives that studies suggest could be harmful.
Kennedy and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary will offer details on Tuesday afternoon in Washington, D.C.
Tuesday’s announcement will target artificial dyes that are used in cereal, ice cream, snacks, yogurts and more.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration in January started the process to ban one artificial dye, Red No. 3, which will need to be removed from food by January 2027 and from medications by 2028 because it was shown to cause cancer in rats.
Kennedy will now seek to remove the eight other petroleum-based dyes approved by the FDA.
The secretary is expected on Tuesday to announce the approval of additional natural dyes, a person familiar with the plans told ABC News.
It is not yet clear what enforcement mechanism Kennedy will seek to implement the new changes.
The two-year timeline Kennedy is expected to announce comes after he told food industry leaders at a meeting last month that he wanted their companies to remove artificial dyes from their products by the end of his four-year term, according to a memo describing the meeting, which was obtained by ABC News.
Kennedy’s announcement Tuesday would speed up that process — and alert companies that Kennedy intends to make good on his warning quickly.
From candy to breakfast cereal to medication, synthetic food dyes are in a wide range of products that Americans consume. Studies suggest their vibrant color makes food more appealing and could even increase appetite.
The health effects of the dyes are not fully understood, but many other countries have either banned the additives outright or required food packaging warning labels about the health risks.
All dyes have the potential to spark allergic reactions for a small minority. Several dyes have been linked to hyperactivity and behavioral problems in children or have been shown to cause cancer in mice or rats — but none have shown to cause cancer in humans.
Already, red and blue states alike have taken matters into their own hands in removing artificial food dyes from certain foods. Both West Virginia and California have passed laws to ban a handful of food dyes from school lunches, with plans to extend the ban to a broader, statewide level too.
In West Virginia, the ban on artificial dyes in school lunch will go into effect in August, making it the first state in the country to implement such restraints. In California, it will take effect in 2028.
Twenty-six other states, from Iowa to Washington and from to Texas to Vermont, are considering similar legislation around banning food dyes or other chemical additives in foods, according to a list compiled by the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization that focuses on chemicals and toxins.
The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment within California’s Environmental Protection Agency in 2021 concluded a two-year study into seven synthetic food dyes that found associations with certain neurobehavioral outcomes in some children.
Researchers also found that the FDA’s current level of “acceptable daily intake” levels for the dyes may be too high to protect children from the potential behavioral impact, the report said.
(WASHINGTON) — Worldwide protests against Tesla CEO Elon Musk over his role in the Trump administration have coincided with a sales slump and stock woes at the electric carmaker.
Little will be known about the precise impact on Tesla’s bottom line, however, until the company releases its earnings report on Tuesday afternoon. That announcement holds implications for Musk, the world’s richest person, who derives much of his wealth from his Tesla holdings.
The release of the new financial details arrives as some shareholders have called on Musk to step down from his White House role and return full-time to the helm of Tesla.
Musk, whose temporary status as a government employee expires next month, will likely face questions about his plans during a conference call with analysts after the earnings release.
“We view this as a fork-in-the-road time,” Dan Ives, a managing director of equity research at the investment firm Wedbush and a longtime Tesla booster, said in a memo to investors on Sunday.
Tesla shares have dropped in value by roughly half from an all-time high in December. Most of those losses have come since President Donald Trump took office and Musk began his controversial governmental cost-cutting efforts as the head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Tesla remains a top electric carmaker but the company faces growing competition, especially from Chinese firms such as BYD.
Deliveries of Tesla vehicles over the first three months of 2025 dropped about 13% compared to the same period a year ago, the company said earlier this month.
When Tesla announced the decline in deliveries, the company made no mention of its CEO but did say that a “changeover of Model Y lines across all four of our factories led to the loss of several weeks of production in Q1,” but added that “the ramp of the New Model Y continues to go well.”
Tesla sold fewer cars in 2024 than it did the year prior, marking the company’s first year-over-year sales decline in more than a decade, earnings released in January showed.
As rivals have challenged Tesla’s dominance in the electric vehicle market, the company has promised a future revenue stream from autonomous taxis, also known as robotaxis.
Musk announced in late January that the company would roll out its robotaxi test program in Austin, Texas, in June. But within days, China-based competitor BYD unveiled advances in self-driving technology, which the company said was set to be included in models costing as little as $9,600.
Tesla boasts a more complete domestic supply chain than its rival U.S. carmakers but the company remains vulnerable to auto tariffs of the type President Trump imposed earlier this month, according to Musk.
“To be clear, this will affect the price of parts in Tesla cars that come from other countries. The cost impact is not trivial,” Musk said in a post on X in late March.
Gordon Johnson, CEO and founder of data firm GLJ Research, who is bearish on Tesla, voiced concerns about the company in a memo to investors on Monday, saying that the automaker faces a mix of “operational, financial, and reputational challenges.”
“Is Tesla facing an existential crisis?” Johnson added.
(WASHINGTON) — Do parents of public school children have a constitutional right to opt-out their kids from classroom lessons involving storybooks that feature LGBTQ themes or characters?
The Supreme Court will tackle that question Tuesday in a closely watched First Amendment case that comes as the Trump administration moves to empower parents and root out diversity and inclusion initiatives across the U.S. education system.
A group of parents, including Muslims, Orthodox Ukrainians, Christians and Jews from Montgomery County, Maryland, claim constitutional protections for religious exercise mean they must have an opportunity to exempt their children from any instruction on gender or sexuality that may be counter to teachings of faith.
“We’re under no illusion, they’ll learn about these things, but in the formative years, what ultimately we could not agree with [Montgomery County Public Schools], is where inclusion stopped and indoctrination started,” said Wael Elkoshairi, who is homeschooling his fourth-grade daughter because he says the books infringe on his Muslim faith.
The school board, made up of locally elected representatives, says the purpose of education is to expose children to a broad mix of people and ideas — and that the Constitution does not guarantee students the right to skip lessons inconsistent with their beliefs.
Lower courts sided with the board. The justices will now take a closer look at whether the county’s refusal to grant an opt-out to parents illegally burdens their religious rights.
“The case is a good illustration of the fact that public schools are at ground zero in the culture wars,” said Jim Walsh, a Texas lawyer who represents school boards and is a member of the National School Attorneys Association.
“We all want the school to reflect our values, but we don’t agree on our values. And certainly issues about same-sex marriage, the rights of lesbians and gays, are right at the center of that,” he said.
Starting in 2022, Montgomery County — one of the most diverse counties in the country — introduced a series of LGBTQ-themed storybooks for reading in elementary school classrooms under a statewide mandate to be more inclusive of the diversity of families and children attending the schools.
The local school board, which closely consulted with educators in approving the curriculum, maintains that the books do not take a side on issues of gender or sexuality and that teachers are instructed not to teach or enforce any particular view.
Among the illustrated titles is “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” by Sarah Brannen, about a young girl who worries her close relationship with a beloved uncle will change after he marries his male fiance. “Prince & Knight” by Daniel Haack presents a fairy-tale narrative about a blossoming romance between the main characters after a dramatic rescue from a dragon.
“Nothing in my book is any different than most fairy tales that have some sort of romance at the center of it,” said Haack. “Nothing different than “Sleeping Beauty” or “Cinderella” or any of those.”
In the book “Intersection Allies,” a group of three sociologist authors set out to simplify complex ideas about identity, including what it means to be nonbinary.
“We wrote this to affirm kids who are left out of the stories that we often tell,” said LaToya Council, one of the authors. “This book is not saying that, you know, your child has to choose to be transgender. It’s saying respect someone who is trans and their ability to seek spaces that are comfortable for them.”
Chelsea Johnson, another of the book’s authors, insisted nothing in the text asks anyone to change their beliefs. “Schools and parents and communities are partners with each other and helping kids make sense of the world and we don’t have to opt our kids out to do that.”
Montgomery County guidelines advise educators to make the storybooks available for students to read on their own, to read aloud, or share in reading groups. Teachers are instructed not to advance a particular viewpoint about sexuality or gender with respect to the characters.
At first, during the 2022-2023 school year, the board allowed parents to opt-out their kids from any lessons involving the books, but it later changed course, denying any opt-outs.
“When I was in school, I was opted-out of sex ed because I wasn’t ready, and my parents didn’t feel it was appropriate for the teachers to talk about it, and it didn’t hurt anyone,” said Billy Moges, a mother of three and devout Christian, who pulled her kids from Montgomery County schools because of the books.
“The problem with some of these books, though, as well, is they were love stories, so it was not just exposure to LGBTQ characters. These were love stories,” said Elkoshairi.
School officials explained in court documents that administering an opt-out program became too cumbersome to manage, led to higher rates of student absenteeism, and was ultimately inconsistent with an educational mission of supporting all types of families.
“These books are representing the community that is surrounding these children,” said Emily McGowan, who mothers second- and sixth-graders with her wife Sharon in Montgomery County. “You cannot deny that we exist. We live here, our kids go to school here.”
The McGowans say opt-outs over LGBTQ stories harm the children whose family lives are represented in the books.
“The idea that 10 of their classmates get to get up and walk out because there’s two mommies in this book — What is the message that’s sent to our kid who has two mommies?” said Sharon McGowan. “That something is so offensive about this that they get to walk out and maybe they even get to go to the playground and have extra play time?”
Nearly every state gives parents the ability to opt-out their children from sex education classes but opt-outs for LGBTQ issues vary widely by community and are often decided by board members elected by local parents, Walsh said.
“We can all understand parents having strong feelings about when and how is my child going to be taught about sexual issues. So, there are more opt-outs about this than anything else. But if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs in this case, it’s not gonna stop with just sex and gender issues. It will cover a wide variety of things that parents may have objections to,” he said.
The case comes as the Trump administration has vowed to give more control over education to local leaders and communities. But even in places where school boards are choosing to prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion in their curriculum — like Montgomery County — some conservatives are still pushing to override policies.
“The school board has decided to disrupt the thinking of their children on an area that has long been understood as going to the core of parental authority for their children, on sex and gender,” said Will Haun, a senior attorney at Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the plaintiffs before the Supreme Court. “In that area, the First Amendment absolutely protects the parents.”
“The democratic process is important, and that’s where we debate curriculum,” Haun added, “but here we’re talking about restoring an opt-out right, which is not a challenge to the curriculum.”
Wael Elkoshairi insists he harbors no ill will toward LGBTQ families and says he isn’t calling for a ban on any books. But he hopes the high court — as a matter of faith — will give parents greater control.
“When people have differences of opinion on certain things, accommodations work well to relieve everybody, and we move on,” Elkosairi said.
As for the McGowans, they are hoping the court’s conservative majority holds the line.
“The fact that the Court took the case at all — I don’t have reason to believe that they took the case to affirm the importance of inclusion in the public schools,” said Sharon McGowan. “If harm is done by their decision, we will figure out what we need to do at a personal and a community level to mitigate that harm.”
A decision in the case is expected by the end of June.
