Queer And Trans People Didn't Survive Pride To Be Erased By The Supreme Court
When I was a kid, I never saw myself in the classroom. Not in the books we read. Not in the stories my teachers told. Not in the lessons about families, love, or community.
As a Black queer boy, I learned early what it meant to be invisible — to grow up surrounded by silences so heavy they shape how you see yourself and what you believe is possible. So, decades later, as an attorney, when I read the Supreme Court's ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor this Pride Month — a decision that makes it easier for parents to pull their kids out of public school lessons about LGBTQ+ people — I felt that old ache all over again. And I know I'm not alone.
In a 6–3 decision, the court sided with families in Maryland who claimed their 'sincerely held religious beliefs' gave them the right to opt their children out of any lesson that even mentions LGBTQ+ people or families. The lessons weren't graphic sex ed or 'adult content.' They were basic, age-appropriate stories acknowledging that queer and trans people exist. That our families are real. That our lives matter.
Apparently, to this court, our existence is optional.
Let's be clear about what this means. Public schools are supposed to be one of the few places where young people learn about communities, cultures, and people different from their own. That's not radical; that's the promise of public education. It's not 'indoctrination' to tell the truth. It's not radical to say that queer and trans people exist, have always existed, and deserve to be part of the full story.
For so many kids — especially those who grow up in families or communities where being LGBTQ+ is condemned or erased — the classroom may be the only place they learn that they're not alone. I didn't have that. I remember scanning my school library shelves for someone — anyone — who looked or loved like me. Nothing. No stories about Black queer boys trying to figure themselves out. No characters who felt like a permission slip to dream a bigger life. That void shapes you. It makes you feel like you're the problem, like your existence is something that should be edited out. Source: Jacob Wackerhausen / Getty
And what about the kids who aren't queer or trans? They deserve the truth, too. They deserve an education that reflects the full, messy, beautiful reality of the world, not a version scrubbed clean to keep some parents comfortable in their prejudice. When you opt kids out of reality, you're teaching them that LGBTQ+ people are a threat or taboo, instead of neighbors, classmates, and family.
So, no — don't call this 'religious freedom.' True religious liberty means we each get to believe — and exist — without erasing each other's humanity. Bigotry wrapped in the language of faith is still bigotry. And it has no place in a public school that's supposed to serve everyone.
It's not lost on me that this decision came down in the final days of June, when the Supreme Court often releases its most controversial rulings. But for LGBTQ+ people, that timing stings even more because June is Pride Month: a time when we're supposed to be louder about our stories, our survival, and our joy. Instead, we're forced to watch the highest court in the country hand bigots a permission slip to pretend we don't exist. This isn't just about one family in Maryland — it's part of a much bigger, coordinated backlash. From book bans to 'Don't Say Gay' laws to curriculum censorship, the goal is the same: erase us from public life until there's no evidence we were ever here.
But we were. And we are. And we're not going anywhere.
For the queer and trans students sitting in classrooms right now, representation shouldn't feel like a privilege. Every young person deserves to see their whole self reflected in their education. Teachers should be able to say the word 'gay' or 'trans' without fearing a lawsuit. School shelves should hold books that tell stories kids can see themselves in — and ones that open doors they didn't even know they could walk through. Feeling seen should be the baseline, not the exception.
Telling young people the truth about the world gives them a chance to grow up whole, to see difference not as danger but as part of what makes life richer and more beautiful. This ruling insults that vision, and every student who needs to know they belong. Source: UCG / Getty
But this moment can't only be about despair. Anger can be useful when it fuels action. There are ways to push back: show up at local school board meetings when books and inclusive curricula are under attack. Run for those school boards if possible. Support groups fighting censorship and curriculum bans — organizations like GLSEN, PFLAG, the ACLU, or local queer youth alliances doing the work every day. Talk with the young people at home and in the community — remind them they are loved exactly as they are.
Even small acts matter. Check that the local library includes queer and trans books on its shelves — and donate some if they're missing.
Advocacy isn't always about giant national fights — it's about what happens in classrooms, libraries, and school board meetings in our own backyard. The same places where erasure happens are the same places where we can show up, speak up, and refuse to disappear.
I keep thinking about that little Black queer kid I once was. How different it could have been if I'd seen myself on the page. How many years it might have saved me from believing I was the problem. There's a generation of young people right now who don't have time for that shame. They're bolder. They're fighting back. They remind me why we keep showing up for each other.
Pride has never been just about rainbow flags and parades. It's about resistance — about refusing to disappear, no matter how many people wish we would. They can ban our stories, but they can't ban us. They can try to silence our teachers, pull our books off shelves, and rewrite the curriculum — but they can't erase our existence, our history, or our future.
We didn't survive this long just to be edited out of a lesson plan. We survived to be seen, to be heard, to keep showing up for each other — Pride Month and every month.
And we will.
Preston Mitchum is the founder of PDM Consulting, based in Washington, D.C. His work focuses on racial justice, gender equity, LGBTQ+ liberation, and the pursuit of policies that move beyond symbolism to create lasting change.
SEE ALSO:
Pride Is Still Protest: World Pride In The Era Of Trump 2.0
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Queer And Trans People Didn't Survive Pride To Be Erased By The Supreme Court was originally published on newsone.com
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USA Today
an hour ago
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Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Taylor Wilson: Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Tuesday, July 1st, 2025. This is USA TODAY's The Excerpt. Today Republicans continue to negotiate key parts of Trump's bill, plus the Supreme Court takes on campaign spending, and some plastic bag bans appear to be working. The Senate was still voting and negotiating early this morning on President Donald Trump's sweeping bill on tax cuts, Medicaid, and border security, after a marathon weekend of debate and political maneuvering. But the results still was not certain. 17 long hours after they began, Republican senators were trying to resolve disagreements over policies that would impact Medicaid, green energy tax credits, and carve outs to protect food stamps in Alaska and Hawaii, before bringing them up for a vote. Republicans hold a 53 to 47 majority and face United Democratic opposition, and the defection of at least two of their members. 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USA Today
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Maureen Groppe: So the states who are fighting this, and they're not the only ones fighting it, immigrant rights groups are as well, but the states that are fighting this, they're going to continue to look for ways to keep the President's policy on hold while they continue to challenge the legality of what he's doing. And we could see some action on that in the next few months. So what the court did yesterday did not at all look at whether the president's policy is constitutional, and that's something that's going to be coming before them in the next few months, so probably when they come back after their summer break. Taylor Wilson: I know President Donald Trump has had some comments after this decision. How did the president react? Maureen Groppe: He was quite happy. His direct quote was very happy and he said the Constitution has been brought back. Although again, I will point out that the Supreme Court, their decision did not say anything about the constitutionality of his policy, but it does have broader implications beyond this particular policy. It's going to make it harder in general for people to challenge Trump's policies. It puts restrictions on how judges can put these temporary blocks on policies as they're being challenged. Taylor Wilson: All right. Meanwhile, justices ruled against a conservative challenge to an Obamacare provision that forces health insurers to cover certain medicines and services. Maureen, what exactly was at stake here and what does this decision functionally mean? Maureen Groppe: Yeah, so this was about some cancer screenings, HIV prevention medications, some medication to prevent heart disease. These preventive care services that under the Affordable Care Act that health insurers have to cover as part of what you get for your premium, they can't charge copays or deductibles on those. And the challenge was whether the group of experts who recommend what services should be covered without extra cost, whether that task force had so much power that the experts should have been appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. And the Supreme Court said they were not. So that means that this task force can continue to make these recommendations, but in doing so, and that Supreme Court's decision saying that there's sufficient control by the Health and Human Services' secretary over this task force, that means that the secretary could have more influence now over these recommendations. And the current secretary may want to revisit some of the things. That's something that health experts are looking at to see, does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who has made some changes to vaccine policy, whether he's going to also want to get involved in these preventive care services? Taylor Wilson: All right. Well, the court also made a decision on LGBTQ plus books in school. Maureen, we've talked about this here on the show before. Who did they side with on this? Maureen Groppe: They sided with the parents. The parents in the Maryland school district who said they had religious objections to these books being used in the elementary school classes, and they wanted their children to be able to be excused from class when the books were being read. The school initially agreed to do that, but then found it was too difficult to administer the absences and figure out what else to do with alternate instruction for the students who were being excused from class. So they stopped allowing opt-outs and the parents sued and the Supreme Court sided with them and said they should be allowed opt-out. That it's a burden on their religious rights if they don't have the ability to remove their kids from the classroom when these books are being read. Taylor Wilson: Let's shift to Texas now. There's a law requiring pornographic websites verify users are at least 18 years of age there. How did this move through the courts and who is pitted against each other on this issue? Maureen Groppe: This case was about the First Amendment rights of adults versus the real interest that states have to try to protect minors, keep minors from accessing this explicit information online. The lower courts, the first judge that looked at this thought that this did burden adults First Amendment rights, but then the appeals court said it didn't, and the Supreme Court also found that it was not too much of a burden on adults to have this age requirement. The concern among the challengers was that having to upload identifying information to prove that they are over-rating that that information on a website might get hacked, might get leaked, its sensitive information. And they thought that there were other ways that Texas could try to limit minors access to these websites without requiring adults to have to upload identifying information about themselves. Taylor Wilson: Well, Maureen, the court also weighed in on a conservative challenge to a phone and internet subsidy program. What did they decide and who are the winners and losers in this case? Maureen Groppe: Yeah, so this challenge was about whether Congress was giving away too much authority to a federal agency to decide how much money, what kind of fees to put on telecommunications carriers. That money that's raised to those fees goes to subsidize phone and internet and rural areas for libraries and things like that. The conservative challengers said that it was essentially an unconstitutional tax because it's a tax and Congress has to decide what the tax is. The Federal Communications Commission shouldn't get to be the one to decide how much should be raised and then spent on this program. But in a six three decision with three of the court's conservatives joining the court's three liberals, they said that Congress had put enough restrictions on this program when they set it up that they did not give away too much of their authority and this program can continue to operate. Taylor Wilson: All right. Well, this was clearly a massive day for the court. Maureen, stepping back a bit, what's your biggest takeaway from this flurry of decisions we saw yesterday? Maureen Groppe: Most of the attention going into this was what the court was going to do about the birthright citizenship changes as well as what implications that would have for challenging other Trump policies. And it ended up being a big win for Trump. And this is the second year in a row that the Supreme Court has ended its term with a big win for Trump. Last year, the big decision that they handed down on their last day was won on presidential immunity. The court gave presidents broad immunity for their official acts as president, and that helped ensure that Trump did not have to face a trial before the election for attempting to overturn his election loss before. One of the things that tends to happen in the final decisions is you see a lot more ideological splits. The chief justice often likes to say that most of the cases that they're citing during the year are unanimous, or at least a lot of them are unanimous. But it's at the end of the term where you see the court breaking down more along ideological lines. And we saw that yesterday with the six conservatives on one side and the three liberals on the other in the Trump case, the birthright citizenship case. Also on the case about Texas's age verification law for porn sites and on the case about the books in the schools that the parents objected to. But we also got two decisions that were six three splits, but in a different way. So in those two cases, the one about the challenge to Obamacare and the challenge to the internet subsidy program, there you had three of the courts conservatives, Justice Barrett, the Chief Justice and Justice Kavanaugh, they joined with the three liberals in rejecting those conservative challenges. So that's another interesting six three split that we've been seeing from the court this term. Taylor Wilson: That's a good explainer. So, Maureen, what does all this mean for next term? Maureen Groppe: We are probably going to be seeing more cases about Trump. So the cases that have been a lot of hundreds of challenges to Trump's policies moving through the court system. Right now, the challenges that have gotten to the court have been at a preliminary level, and we're going to see more of those. Even though the court is not in session over the summer, they will continue to take action on emergency appeals, and those are decisions that they take without the oral arguments and as much briefings, and they often don't say much. Their opinions are very limited on those, but you can expect them to be making decisions about various challenges to Trump's actions over the summer. And then next term, we could see them taking up some of those challenges more fully and ruling on the underlying legal issues, not just on whether his policies can stay in place while they're being challenged. Taylor Wilson: All right, Maureen Groppe covers the Supreme Court for USA TODAY. Maureen, I thank you. I hope you can rest up here at some point. Thanks so much. Maureen Groppe: Thanks for having me. ♦ Taylor Wilson: Millions of people living illegally in the United States are facing stiff new fines from the Trump administration as the White House pressures migrants to self-deport to their birth countries. A newly issued rule allows federal immigration authorities to find people up to $500 for illegally crossing the border and a thousand dollars per day for not leaving the United States if ordered to do so. The measure also allows a $10,000 fine for people who said they would leave voluntarily but have not. Crossing the border illegally or overstaying a visa is typically considered a civil violation, and the White House said the fines reflect the administration's efforts to reduce illegal immigration. Federal law has long given authorities the power to impose such fines. Though they were rarely issued until the first Trump administration, and even then only rarely because officials found the process cumbersome. 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Taylor Wilson: Author and journalism Professor Kate Winkler Dawson joins my colleague Dana Taylor, to unpack the ethics of true crime and what responsible storytelling really looks like. You can find that episode right here tomorrow morning beginning at five AM Eastern Time. And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. As always, you can also email us at podcasts@ I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back Monday with more The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
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