On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that parents with religious objections to books with LGBTQ characters must be allowed to opt their children out of any public school instruction that uses those books. The decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor was handed down along party lines, with all six Republicans in the majority and all three Democrats in dissent.

The Mahmoud case highlights the Republican justices’ impatience to remake constitutional law in a more socially conservative image, especially in cases involving religion. It is certainly possible for public school instruction to violate a religious child’s constitutional rights. The Constitution, for example, forbids government institutions like public schools from coercing students into violating their religious views. As Justice Samuel Alito notes in the Mahmoud opinion, the Constitution would also forbid teachers from openly mocking a student’s faith.

But, as a federal appeals court which previously heard the Mahmoud case warned, we don’t actually know whether the Constitution was violated in this case. Although Montgomery County, Maryland, approved several books with LGBTQ characters for use in public schools, the lower court found that the record in this case contains no information “about how any teacher or school employee has actually used any of the Storybooks in the Parents’ children’s classrooms, how often the Storybooks are actually being used, what any child has been taught in conjunction with their use, or what conversations have ensued about their themes.”

Nevertheless, Alito handed down a fairly broad opinion which is likely to impose........

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