In a ruling that educators, authors, and free speech advocates were anxiously awaiting, on Friday, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor.

In the 6-3 decision, the Court decided in favor of the parents over the Maryland school district, ruling that the government burdens parents' religious exercise when it requires their children to participate in instruction that violates the families' religious beliefs.

Justice Samuel Alito authored the majority opinion, with Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.

On its surface, the case was about parental rights, religious objections, and LGBTQIA+ books. But the impact of the decision could be felt across public education and children's publishing, experts say. 

Following oral arguments in April, most suspected the Court would rule this way.

“It was expected, but that doesn't make it any less devastating,” PEN America staff attorney Elly Brinkley told SLJ soon after the decision was announced. “We were hoping for a bad but narrow ruling, and it's pretty broad ruling. It is, I think, going to have a maximal effect on book bans around the country. It’s a huge blow to the freedom to read. It's a huge blow to the LGBTQ community and writers. And it's a huge blow to students who are going to miss the opportunity to engage with these books and learn about the world around them, to see themselves reflected in these books.”

[READ: Forthcoming Supreme Court Ruling Could Have Chilling Effect on Public Education and Publishing]

Alito wrote that the court rejected “this chilling vision of the power of the state to strip away the critical right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.” But his fellow Justice predicted it was the Court that would instead create a harmful chilling effect. In her dissent, which she read from the bench, Sotomayor forecast “untold harms.”

“The result will be chaos for this Nation’s public schools,” she wrote. “Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools. The harm will not be borne by educators alone: Children will suffer too. Classroom disruptions and absences may well inflict long-lasting harm on students’ learning and development.

“Worse yet, the majority closes its eyes to the inevitable chilling effects of its ruling. Many school districts, and particularly the most resource strapped, cannot afford to engage in costly litigation over opt-out rights or to divert resources to tracking and managing student absences. Schools may instead censor their curricula, stripping material that risks generating religious objections. The Court’s ruling, in effect, thus hands a subset of parents the right to veto curricular choices long left to locally elected school boards. Because I cannot countenance the Court’s contortion of our precedent and the untold harms that will follow, I dissent.”

Brinkley shares Sotomayor’s concerns.

“The opt outs themselves are a huge blow to free expression, but what we're really afraid of is the chilling effect it's going to have on censorship across the country,” said Brinkley. “It seems very likely that it will lead to the removal of a broad swath of material from curricula, as school districts anticipate objections from parents. It's going to really dilute inclusive, diverse literature in public school curricula across the country. It is going to send a message to students from LGBTQ families, students who may be LGBTQ themselves, that they are other, that their very existence is so offensive that it justifies their classmates leaving the room just to avoid hearing it. It’s really devastating.”

[READ: SLJ Reviews: Books at the Center of Supreme Court Case]

Sarah Brannen, author of Uncle Bobby’s Wedding—which was called out by Justice Sam Alito during oral arguments—was still processing the decision when SLJ spoke with her late Friday afternoon.

“All the authors and illustrators of the books in the case are dismayed,” Brannen said. “We wrote our books for LGBTQ kids and for kids with LGBTQ families, but for all kids, because we feel it's important to open those windows to children, to all the different sorts of people who live in this big, complicated world. We're concerned that one of the effects may be that schools will remove those books themselves, because it will be so complicated to try and deal with the opt outs. There are so many different implications in the case. … To have this somehow turn into the law of the land is so surreal. I still haven't really taken it in.”

The decision requires schools to allow parents to opt out of lessons to which they have sincerely held religious objections. It does not require schools to remove books or change curriculum. It will now be up to individual educators and districts to push back against any pressure and avoid the urge to self-censor, according to Brinkley.

“Educators have a really important role in fighting back,” said Brinkley. “They are going to be on the front lines of ensuring that this isn't the worst possible scenario, because it's going to be up to educators and school districts to ensure that they are not preemptively pulling material from curriculum in anticipation of objections. I think educators have a real responsibility to uphold free expression and commit to those principles and to stand firm—even when it becomes challenging—and to recognize that free expression and LGBTQ rights are essential. Even if they have to provide the opt out option, they don't have to censor the curriculum.”

Brinkley knows it’s a lot to ask.

“I understand that it's a logistical nightmare, but it is a really important thing. Educators and communities have a duty not to capitulate to the most extreme views.”

Brannen shares the hope and recognizes the need for publishers be a part of the fight as well.

“I hope publishers still publish picture books about LGBTQ people and their families, I really do,” Brannen said. “I hope schools continue to teach them. It's going to be difficult with the opt outs, but it's so important that they're there, so I really hope that schools understand that and make the effort for the sake of the children….

“I wrote Uncle Bobby's Wedding from a place of love, about love, and I certainly wrote it for kids with two moms or two dads, but I wrote it for everyone. It's part of the world. I think it's important to have my book and books like the other ones in school.”

It will take time to see how the ruling impacts the day-to-day of education and library collections across the country. Sotomayor closed her dissent with this: “Today’s ruling threatens the very essence of public education. The Court, in effect, constitutionalizes a parental veto power over curricular choices long left to the democratic process and local administrators. That decision guts our free exercise precedent and strikes at the core premise of public schools: that children may come together to learn not the teachings of a particular faith, but a range of concepts and views that reflect our entire society. Exposure to new ideas has always been a vital part of that project, until now.

“The reverberations of the Court’s error will be felt, I fear, for generations. Unable to condone that gave misjudgment, I dissent.”