In the United States, every member of a public school community is 100% free to hold their own political and religious views.
They are 100% NOT free to use those views to harass, abuse, assault, discriminate against, or indoctrinate other members of the school community.
Protecting public schools from political and religious bias has been an issue for as long as the United States has had public education. Consequently, the US has a deep history of laws and court precedents protecting public schools from being used for the kind of political indoctrination that is common under authoritarian governments.
This Know Your Rights Guide outlines a few of the most important laws and court rulings to know, for school communities that are striving to remain free from bias and serve all students and families.
Federal law prohibits any federal government involvement in the school curriculum, instruction, or selection of materials.
Control over the curriculum is reserved for the states and local school districts. The law is clear and absolute.
“No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system.”
– 20 U.S.C. §1232a. Prohibition against Federal control of education
Students retain their right to free speech and free expression at school.
Tinker v Des Moines is a 1969 Supreme Court case which established that public school students retain their First Amendment rights to free speech and free expression at school. The case involved schools trying to prevent students from wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, much like how some schools are preventing students from wearing rainbows and Pride flags today.
“In the absence of a specific showing of constitutionally valid reasons to regulate their speech, students are entitled to freedom of expression of their views… [S]chool officials cannot suppress expressions of feelings with which they do not wish to contend…It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
– Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503
School boards may not ban books based on politics or ideology.
Book bans in school libraries have been taken up in a number of Supreme Court Cases, most notably Island Trees School District v Pico. In Pico, the Court found that:
“Local school boards may not remove books from school libraries simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”
The state may not use public schools to impose particular actions or beliefs.
In West Virginia Board of Education v Barnette, the Supreme Court rejected the idea that the state could use public schools to impose upon students certain actions and beliefs, even patriotic ones (West Virginia was punishing students who refused to salute the flag). The strong language of this 1943 decision reflects the fact that at the time, the US was fighting against the aggression of totalitarian governments in both Europe and Asia. Their ruling predicted our current political moment with frightening accuracy.
“Free public education, if faithful to the ideal of secular instruction and political neutrality, will not be partisan or enemy of any class, creed, party, or faction.
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
As governmental pressure toward unity becomes greater, so strife becomes more bitter as to whose unity it shall be. Probably no deeper division of our people could proceed from any provocation than from finding it necessary to choose what doctrine and whose program public educational officials shall compel youth to unite in embracing… Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.”
– West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)
Parents may exempt their own children from instructional materials that run counter to their religious beliefs, but not other students, or the classroom as a whole.
Just last summer, the Roberts court decided in Mahmoud v Taylor that parents have a right to opt their children out of classroom instruction that violates their religious beliefs (in this case, conservative parents who wanted to opt their children out of books with LGBTQ+ content). The Court’s decision helps establish the fact that anti-LGBTQ+ views and attitudes are rooted in a particular set of religious beliefs, making it easier to demonstrate that schools are participating in an unlawful form of religious indoctrination when they restrict content for all students. The ruling is also clear that parents have the right to shape only their own children’s education; they do not have the right to impose those religious beliefs on other students or families. Finally, this ruling makes it clear that the burden of curriculum review and exemption requests falls on the parent, not the teacher.
These civil rights are threatened today.
These are only a few of the most well-known laws and rulings that establish the principle that public schools in the U.S. should be free from religious and political indoctrination. These are also among the civil rights and protections that are most under attack by the Trump administration.
- Despite the fact that federal law prohibits federal involvement in the curriculum, Trump has convened more than 40 conservative political and religious groups in the America 250 Civics Coalition “to advance God-centered, virtuous education for students flourishing across our nation.”
- Trump has used Executive Orders, Dear Colleague letters, agency investigations, and threats of withholding federal funding to bully both states and public schools to change their educational policies and their instructional curriculum. Attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have led to a severe curtailment of content about race and racism, and attacks on ‘radical gender ideology’ have resulted in LGBTQ+ content being removed from the curriculum.
- In doing so, the Trump administration is enacting the agenda of extremist conservative groups, such as The Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025, as well as book-banning groups like Moms for Liberty. Those groups are then rewarded for their political support with a place on the America 250 Coalition.
- These conservative groups are also working with state legislatures, who over the past decade have passed hundreds of anti-trans and anti-DEI laws at the state level. State governments do have legitimate influence over public school instruction, in a way that the federal government does not. However, the courts have consistently found that while the legislature may set guidelines for education about race or gender identity, they may not discriminate either for or against one race or gender identity rather than another.
- Any groups within the Department of Education that might have held the White House or these legislatures in check, such as the Office of Civil Rights, have been effectively dismantled.
Taken together, these are exactly the kinds of effort to “proscribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism and religion” that have concerned the courts so deeply in the past.
We all have a right to schools that support every student, every family, and every teacher.
According to one analysis by the Brookings Institute, the Trump administration is using two paired strategies to impact public schools in spite of laws and court rulings that prevent them from doing so. The first is ‘flooding the zone,’ or rolling out so many complicated orders and vague guidelines that schools and their attorneys don’t have time to prepare a response… and then doing the same the next day, and the next, and the next. States and schools file lawsuits against these orders, which are often successful, but the courts have also been flooded.
The second strategy is taking advantage of the ‘information gap.’ For example, in February 2025 the administration sent a letter to every public school district, threatening to take away all their federal funds if they did not agree to end all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives immediately. Many districts quickly signed the agreement, and the letter was widely covered in the media. When, however, the courts found that the administration was violating the law and the letter was unenforceable, there was no official notification and little announcement in the press. Due to this information gap, many schools across the country are still obeying an illegal directive.
Because the courts and school administrators are overwhelmed, the political takeover of America’s classrooms is a problem that needs to be fixed from the bottom up. Educators, administrators, students, and families in every school and district will need to work together to identify and eliminate the elements of political and religious bias that have crept into our classrooms already, and then work to restore instructional curriculums and approaches that respect and support every student, every family, and every teacher.
The Supportive Schools program of the Campaign for Southern Equality provides information and resources to help people build school communities that are safe and welcoming for all students, staff and families. We cannot provide legal advice (for legal guidance, please consult an attorney) but we do believe that every person should know their civil rights and how to exercise them.
