WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court said it will consider whether a Maryland school system is violating the Constitution by incorporating LGBTQ-friendly books into the elementary school curriculum without giving parents the right to opt out.

Plunging into a culturally divisive fight, the justices agreed to hear an appeal by parents who say the Montgomery County storybook program infringes their religious rights. The materials include books about a puppy that gets lost at an LGBTQ-pride parade and about a young child whose gender identity doesn’t match his birth-assigned sex.

In ruling against the parents, a federal appeals court said it wasn’t yet clear how the books would be used in the classroom. The panel said that, as the litigation moved forward, families would need to prove that they or their children were being coerced into changing their religious views or practices.

The parents say the appeals court’s standard would mean that parents “essentially surrender their right to direct the religious upbringing of their children by sending them to public schools.”

The Supreme Court and its conservative majority in recent years have expanded religious rights under the Constitution’s free exercise clause.

Montgomery County Public Schools, which educates more than 160,000 students, urged the Supreme Court not to intervene.

The parents “seek to unsettle a decades-old consensus that parents who choose to send their children to public school are not deprived of their right to freely exercise their religion simply because their children are exposed to curricular materials the parents find offensive,” the school district argued.

The court didn’t indicate whether it will resolve the case in its current term, which will end by early July, or hold the dispute for the term that starts in October.

The case is Mahmoud v. Taylor, 24-297.

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