In a landmark decision late last month, Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court reaffirmed parents’ First Amendment right to educate their children in a manner consistent with their religious beliefs. And because of the Free Exercise Clause, the government—i.e., public schools—cannot “substantially interfere” with that religious upbringing. 

In Mahmoud, the Court addressed a “gender identity” curriculum in Montgomery County, Maryland, which intentionally promoted gender fluidity and LGBT viewpoints to elementary school kids. Yet the school board stubbornly refused to allow parents to opt out of those classes based on religious objection. In a decision written by Justice Alito, the Court built off its 1972 decision in Wisconsin v. Yoder, which held that Wisconsin could not force Amish children to attend school beyond eighth grade. In the ensuing decades, Yoder had been treated as a unique case and relegated to rare situations where the state directly forces a child to do something antithetical to that child’s religion. Citing the long history of parental rights over child education in America, the Court breathed new life into Yoder. It held that unlawful “compulsion” or “coercion” is not limited to affirmative obligations and obligations in school but can include soft coercion as well, such as when normative instructions and less will sway impressionable elementary schoolers.

Mahmoud is a breakthrough in the Court’s religious freedom jurisprudence, expanding and reinvigorating protections for religious families. And, hopefully, it will disrupt the indoctrination and politicized teaching that is rotting education. But, in one area, the decision ought to be particularly valuable—combating anti-Israel hatred in the classroom. Pernicious anti-Zionism has become deeply entrenched in public school teaching, and even in some required curricula, at the behest of far-left teachers and unions. It is a problem that Jewish families have been dealing with, especially since October 7, but also well before. Though Jewish parents (and some non-Jewish parents) have tried to organize, their grassroots efforts have been stymied by powerful unions, stacked school boards, and retaliation and bullying of their children. Advocates for those Jewish families can now look to Mahmoud to develop a successful litigation strategy.

As with gender identity teaching in Mahmoud, anti-Israel indoctrination is a pervasive problem in public education—the “kindergarten intifada,” as Abigail Shrier calls it. All over the country, teachers’ unions and school boards are designing curricula to indoctrinate young students into believing that Israel has no right to exist and that Jews have no historical claim to the land. California, for example, implemented a required “ethnic studies” course, through which teachers have laundered such anti-Zionism training. In one course, Shrier’s exposé reveals, teachers showed slides that the “Israel invasion has decimated Indigenous populations.” 

To be sure, these claims are egregiously wrong. They have no grounding history and are not supported by empirical evidence—only by left-wing “colonialism” propaganda. Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel and have had a continuous presence there beginning long before Islam even existed. That much is conclusively established by archeological, historical, and biblical evidence. And Israel’s existence is legitimate under international law based on an overwhelming vote of the U.N. in 1947 for Jewish sovereignty—and because Israel declared its independence in 1948 and then successfully defended it against attack after attack by its Arab neighbors. The fact that teachers are instructing otherwise is a stain on public schools and educational standards, particularly at a time when they are failing to teach the basics of reading and math. 

But it is more than an abject failure of basic standards in history. It is also—in the Supreme Court’s parlance—a “substantial interference” with the religious education of Jewish children. To deny the Jews’ historical connection to the land of Israel rejects a core tenet of Judaism. Israel is discussed repeatedly in the Torah as the holy land, as well as in many rabbinical texts. In the Torah, in Genesis, God tells Avraham and Sarah to go to a land that comprises modern-day Israel. The book of Exodus tells the story of how the Jews escaped from Egyptian slavery, crossed the desert for forty years, and returned to the Land of Israel. Psalms 126 says that “when God returns the returnees to Zion, we will be like dreamers,” celebrating the Israelites' return to Israel from exile in Babylon. An overwhelming majority of Jews are Zionists, and Israel is a core part of their religion.

Although the Israel-hating school board and teachers’ unions have argued and will continue to argue that their anti-Zionism is “political” and not antisemitic, that is of no legal relevance. If Jews sincerely believe that Israel and Zionism are part of their religion—which they do—then the school has no right to interfere with that idea by trying to teach kids the opposite. In Mahmoud, for example, the Montgomery County school board argued that gender identity teaching would not interfere with religion but would promote religious values through “equity” and “inclusion.” Not so held the Supreme Court. The school board does not get to say what aligns with a parent’s religion or determine religious orthodoxies. Likewise, ill-informed L.A. teachers do not get to decide whether Israel is important to Jewish beliefs. 

Technically, a successful First Amendment Free Exercise claim would only allow Jewish parents to opt their children out of lessons that interfered with Judaism, not to purge those lessons from the curricula. In Mahmoud, the Court found that the opt-out would work because the pro-LGBT reading at issue there was confined to certain “storybook” hours, and so an attendance-based system could be easily administered. Accordingly, that might mean that Jewish parents could only pull their children out of classes where anti-Zionism is part of the curriculum, but not require the school to ditch it altogether. That would be a partial but important victory, insofar as it would protect Jewish children from propaganda but would not cure the widespread social indoctrination that breeds so many antisemites.

That said, successful Free Exercise claims could extend more broadly, insofar as the anti-Israel teaching is not merely confined to “ethnic studies” but is also being laundered through basic courses like math, history, science, and social studies. Teachers are teaching reading with “I is for ‘Intifada’” and geography with maps excluding Israel. Jewish parents should not have to opt their children out of all those basic classes, being forced to choose between religion and the primary elementary courses provided by public schools. Would we tolerate teachers using math or science classes to deny the lessons of Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha? Of course not. And, if they were doing so consistently, a court would not tell Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist students to sit out the entire day. Nor should public schools be allowed to deny Israel’s existence from the morning bell to dismissal. 

Whatever the success of future litigation in this area, one thing is clear. The anti-Israel school boards, teachers, and teachers’ unions are not only ignorant and antisemitic, they are also infringing on the constitutional rights of Jews in America.

All of the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of The National Law Review.