Parents of a Maryland high school student are making a last-ditch effort to win approval for their daughter to graduate next month without her taking a required health education class that they say discriminates against their Christian beliefs.

Maryland requires students to take one credit of a health education class. The family of a senior in Montgomery County Public Schools, whose name has been withheld , has been fighting for two years for their daughter to be exempt from the class due to a directive for health education teachers to “review LGBTQ+ resources to incorporate more inclusive language.”

The parents say the class has “LGBTQ+ affirming” and “religiously discriminating” content that they find offensive due to their faith.

Attempts by the school board to accommodate the family did not satisfy the parents. They have petitioned an appeals court to hear their case, but with graduation scheduled for May, they are making a last-minute appeal to the Maryland Supreme Court to let their daughter graduate without taking the class.

The battle began in 2023 when the parents found out that their daughter, then a sophomore, was enrolled in a health education class. They took issue with a directive for teachers to “review LGBTQ+ resources to incorporate more inclusive language” throughout the class, rather than just in the Family Life and Human Sexuality portion. Fox News reports that screenshots of a teacher guide include content such as a list of “privileged” and “oppressed” people groups that list Christians as “privileged” and “Non Abrahamic Religions/Spiritualities” as “oppressed.”

In June 2023, the parents asked that their daughter be allowed to take the credit of health education from a Catholic school, the Brookewood School. The principal of the MCPS high school rejected that request but offered two other options: take a class at the community college or complete an independent study project.

The parents rejected the community college route due to scheduling issues. They tried to create a plan for an independent study project that would be supervised by a former MCPS teacher who has a Ph.D. in Global Health Promotion.

However, the plan ran into issues over a disagreement on who would be overseeing the independent study. The principal noted that by the school district’s regulations, the “professional staff of the school” would have to be responsible for guiding the student through the independent study program.

The parents responded, “We are simply requesting that the Health A&B curriculum, as specified by MCPS, be taught by a teacher of our choosing that we can trust and who does not have an anti-Christian bias. None of this would be necessary if MCPS had not injected the entire Health A&B curriculum with its slant on LGBTQ+ instruction or if we had been given access to the instructional materials for the current class and allowed to opt out of LGBTQ+ instruction wherever it appears.”

In October 2023, the principal told the parents that the school could not provide an exemption for their daughter. The next month, the family appealed the decision to the MCPS school board, claiming that it violated their rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

“While it is clear that MCPS is attempting to foster an inclusive environment, the classes offered discriminate against our deeply held religious beliefs. We do understand the difficulty of preparing lesson plans that meet all cultural and religious beliefs and we support the free will of all people,” the parents said.

After the parents’ request for an exemption was denied by the local school board, they appealed to the Maryland State Board of Education. The state board noted that there is “no provision to waive or excuse the entire health education course, which is required by State law and local school board regulations.”

“Although Appellants oppose LGBTQ+ material included in the local board’s health curriculum, their constitutional rights are not violated by the local board’s inclusion of such material in the health course and not granting the requested waiver from the health course,” the panel said.

MCPS did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.

The appeal to the Maryland Supreme Court comes as MCPS is facing a lawsuit from a different group of parents over the ability to opt their children out of LGBTQ+ material that will soon be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

That case , Mahmoud v. Taylor , stems from a 2022 lawsuit filed by a coalition of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish parents who voiced concerns that their First Amendment rights were being violated by forcing their pre-K through eighth-grade students to read LGBTQ+ storybooks.

The school district, in that case, initially offered the parents the option to opt their children out of the materials but later rescinded it, sparking the lawsuit.

A decision on whether to grant a preliminary injunction is expected in late June or early July.