The Supreme Court heard arguments this week in Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which parents from Montgomery County, Maryland, challenged the public school system for the right to opt their young children out from exposure to books on LGBT themes.

The case appears, on the surface, to reverse long-standing views of the role of local government. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, defended not federal intervention to prevent discrimination but local governments’ rights to make their own rules. The plaintiffs in the case, a religiously diverse cultural traditionalist group of Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox parents, are looking to the nation’s highest court to discipline their local school board.

Historically, it has been conservatives defending local government as a bulwark of democracy, while progressives looked to limit it. Indeed, arch-progressive Woodrow Wilson, in his prepresidency life as a political scientist, observed that Washington does not govern American communities but, rather, that “they govern themselves.” Wilson, of course, did much to change that.

But taking a closer look at Montgomery........

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