On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court heard a challenge brought by parents arguing that a Maryland School Board violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause by not allowing children to opt out of exposure to books that portray gay, lesbian and trans folks as worthy of dignity and equality. There are numerous complex legal doctrines at play including the law of free exercise, federalism (mostly ignored), and unconstitutional conditions (the plaintiffs argue that the government violated the rule that a public benefit cannot be contingent on the waiver of constitutional rights).

In a sane constitutional world, the legal issues would be easy. No parent or child involved in this case was coerced to do or not do anything religious, no person’s religious activity was prevented or burdened, and no religious indoctrination was urged by any public official. Additionally, the Board tried at first to allow exemptions but found doing so was unworkable given the range of religious objections parents can make to public school classes and activities.

This case has nothing to do with denying anyone religious exercise and everything to do with parents wanting to control the range of ideas public schools are allowed to discuss including respect and civility towards all people. If the plaintiffs win, public schools will be forced to spend a lot of taxpayer money to devise complex administrative schemes allowing parents to shield their children from any ideas that offend their parents’ religious sensibilities. What the political Right wants is a world where religious parents can object to anything and everything in public schools that they find offensive with the end game of essentially destroying public education.

Justice Barrett’s contempt for public schools was evident during the argument based on her tone in general and her obvious anger at Maryland’s compulsory education law. Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh were clearly in the plaintiffs’ camp. Chief Justice Roberts barely uttered a word. The three liberal Justices were as angry as I have ever heard them, especially Justice Jackson.

The plaintiffs will win, and my guess is Roberts will join the dissent because he does not seem to care much about this case. He can avoid a 6-3 partisan decision by joining Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson. No damage done except to the system of public school education in this country.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers had no good answers to many of the questions posed by the liberal justices. One justice asked about parents who might claim that allowing a Trans child in the class exposed their child to something or someone who offends their religious beliefs. The lawyer’s answer was simply that the parents should obviously lose. But why? No answer. Everything else the plaintiffs argued would suggest an opt out in that situation.

Surprisingly, none of the justices asked about religious objections to books praising desegregation. Back in the 1960s, it was often argued that religious beliefs supported the rights of parents to send their children to segregated public schools. But if a parent has a constitutional right to have their child opt out of book discussions about same-sex marriage, why not an opt out for parents whose religion teaches that White and Black school children should not be educated together (as many used to argue).

An amicus brief by a group of Maryland educators and unions sets forth the disastrous consequences of requiring public schools to allow opt outs for parents based on religious conscience issues:

Petitioners urge this Court to declare that parents have a broad constitutional right to insist that public schools affirmatively provide them with advance notice, opt-out procedures, and alternative learning arrangements to shield their children from ideas that offend their religious beliefs. Amici submit this brief to highlight the lack of legal support for such a ruling and the unadministrable burdens it would impose…

Petitioners’ claim deals only with “instruction” in the form of books that were specifically assigned or read to students. But the thrust of their argument is that any school-based exposure to religiously objectionable ideas triggers a constitutionally mandated obligation for the school to provide parents with advance notice and an opportunity to opt-out. The administrative difficulties created by this constitutional rule should be readily apparent…

Are a school’s notice, opt-out, and alternative learning obligations triggered when a book with objectionable content is merely suggested reading or among a list of other books from which students may choose? Are they required when objectionable books are merely stocked in classroom or school libraries to which students have access? Are they required for students’ in-school access to the internet? In each of these situations, there is certainly a risk that a student will be exposed to ideas a parent finds objectionable. But the logistical challenges for a school to identify that risk and provide parents with advance notice of it are effectively insurmountable.

And that is exactly the point of this litigation. At least five of the justices will rule for the plaintiffs, which will pose “effectively insurmountable” burdens on public schools. This will lead to more chaos and more arguments about how terribly public schools are treating our children. And all of this is happening because public school administrators and teachers in this school district simply want to teach their kids that it is okay to be different and every person deserves dignity and respect. If only our country’s most important judges felt the same way.

Eric J. Segall is an American legal scholar and the Ashe Family Chair Professor of Law at Georgia State University College of Law, where he has taught since 1991. He teaches classes on federal courts and constitutional law and is the author of Originalism as Faith and Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court is not a Court and its Justices are not Judges.