Father in MA succeeds in battle against sexualizing his kindergartener son

On December 30, 2025, less than ten weeks after a father had filed suit in Alan L. v. Lexington Public Schools, a federal trial court judge in Massachusetts granted the father’s request for a preliminary injunction.

In doing so, he allowed the father to opt his kindergarten-aged child out of instruction using LGBTQ-themed storybooks as violating his religious rights.

In light of Alan L’s place as part of a trend upholding parental rights when objecting to the sexualization of their young children, this column reviews the facts and the court’s rationale before reflecting on its significance

Background to Alan L. v. Lexington Public Schools

On October 17, 2025, a Christian father in Massachusetts challenged school officials after they ignored his written request to opt his kindergartener, J.L. (whose sex is unidentified), out of instruction using LGBTQ-themed storybooks “promot[ing] sexual and ideological messages directly contrary to his family’s faith.”

Among the ten books in the kindergarten curriculum that the father objected to are All Are Welcome and Families, Families, Families!, featuring same-sex parents, because they “promote secular moral values, LGBTQ themes, or activism contrary to [his] faith.”

Other materials include This Day In June, depicting same-sex couples kissing and what appears to be one or more men dressed as nuns, and You Have a Voice. which encourages students to become activists for LGBTQ causes.

The father was further troubled by his son’s forced exposure “to moral instruction about marriage, sexuality, and family that directly contradicts the biblical teachings in which [his] family believes” because they “promote[] sexualized and ideological messages directly contrary to his family’s faith.”

He further objected because exposing his child to these materials would have required him to “discuss sensitive topics related to sexuality, marriage, and family structures much earlier than [he] wanted or believe[s] is appropriate for [his] child’s age and maturity level.”

The father maintained that educators violated his rights to religious liberty and due process primarily under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, to direct the education of his child from a Christian worldview.

While the father raised questions under Massachusetts law and sought to “opt out J.L. from ANY DEI curriculum,” the judge focused on the case’s religious dimensions under the First Amendment.

Judicial analysis

At the outset of his rationale granting the father’s request for an injunction, the judge acknowledged that “[t]his case is squarely controlled by Mahmoud” v. Taylor, a June 2025 Supreme Court ruling.

In Mahmoud, the Justices upheld the rights of an inter-faith coalition of parents in Maryland to opt their children, some as young as three, out of explicit sex education instruction involving LGBTQ+ characters and themes as transgressing their free exercise rights because the materials were inconsistent with their faiths. By hiding important information about their children, the judge in Alan L. agreed with the Supreme Court’s analysis that educators contravened parents’ religious rights to raise their young in accord with their faiths.

The judge explained that “Mahmoud establishes a two-step framework for resolving such claims…” First, “whether the educational requirement or curriculum at issue would substantially interfere with the religious development of the child or pose a very real threat of undermining the religious beliefs and practices the parent wishes to instill in the child.”

“Moving to the second step of the Mahmoud analysis, [the judge reasoned that the educators] are unlikely to show that their policy and practices can survive strict scrutiny.” In other words, when public officials seek to limit fundamental constitutional rights such as freedom of religion, courts apply strict scrutiny, the most stringent form of constitutional analysis, and are upheld only if they can prove that they acted with compelling governmental interests that are drawn as narrowly drawn as possible.

When courts apply strict scrutiny, as in this case, governmental actions usually fail.

The judge thus concluded that because the father demonstrated the likelihood that his son would have suffered an irreparable harm, that the balance of equities was in his favor, and that such an order was in the public interest, he was entitled to a preliminary injunction ordering officials to keep the child away from the contested materials until the case is ultimately resolved.

Reflections

Even though the judge only issued a preliminary injunction rather than a final order, the proper procedural action at this point in the controversy, Allan L. may well be a harbinger of things to come as parents continue to fight back against public school educators who attempt to sexualize their young children by exposing them to age-inappropriate materials inconsistent with familial values.

In another recent example of parental pushback, mothers in New York recently filed suit challenging so-called educational officials who allowed a teacher to expose their fifth-grade children to inappropriate, graphic sexual materials in an art class.

The judge, early in his opinion, in his only reference to it (albeit as a parenthetical citation) and even before focusing the heart of his judgment on Mahmoud, a case he mentioned by name forty-four times in his twenty-four page opinion, cited 1925’s Pierce v. Society of Sisters. In Pierce, arguably the Supreme Court’s most significant case on parental rights, the Justices explicitly acknowledged their rights to direct the education and upbringing of their children. Affirming the right of non-public schools to operate, and of parents to enroll their young in them, the Pierce Court emphasized that “[t]he child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

Allan L. is yet another clash over whose values will prevail. Will parents retain their God-given fundamental right, in effect since time immemorial, to direct the education and upbringing of their children in accordance with their religious values and beliefs? Or will they be forced to defer to the seemingly ever-changing dictates du jour of so-called progressive public officials?

In Allan L. it is perplexing that educational officials sought to ignore the father’s rights by refusing to honor his written request to exclude his child from instruction, clearly inconsistent with the family’s values concerning sexuality, marriage, and gender, for which the youngster was emotionally and intellectually ill-prepared to address.

At the same time, it is unclear what educators hope to achieve by pushing for the inclusion of such sexualized materials for kindergarteners. Additionally, the actions of educators risk confusing children by indoctrinating them with values inconsistent with those of their parents while sowing seeds of discord in their homes as youngsters try to sort out the very different perspectives with which they are presented in their homes and schools.

Equally troubling in Allan L. is how educational officials at Lexington, Massachusetts’s Estabrook Elementary School ignored one-hundred year-old Supreme Court precedent starting in Pierce, defining the substantive due process rights of parents as the primary caregivers of their children.

The actions of these educators are all the more egregious because, as noted, they ignored the unequivocal guidance on parental rights the Supreme Court reaffirmed earlier this year in Mahmoud.

Hopefully, educators in the guise of activists, whether in Massachusetts or elsewhere, will honor the primacy of parental rights by refraining from interfering in family matters in terms of their religious values. One also hopes, then, that educators will finally comply with clear Supreme Court precedent that the Justices recently buttressed in Mahmoud, by respecting parental rights to have their children excused from age and content inappropriate explicit sexual material inconsistent with their familial religious values.