PARTNER PERSPECTIVE
The Dangerous State Legislative Agenda of Parental-Rights Extremists
Angela Grimberg
Executive Director, Coalition for Responsible Home Education
Samantha Field
Government Relations Director, Coalition for Responsible Home Education
Since 2014, Parental-Rights Extremists have been accelerating their plan to pass a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” in every state. These harmful bills allow a fringe minority of parents to exercise disproportionate control over schools and undermine the rights of young people. This year, over eighty of these bills were filed across the US, and they were passed into law in North and South Carolina, Iowa, Missouri, and Montana, bringing the total number of states with a Parents’ Bill of Rights to sixteen. This movement is gaining ground rapidly.
Parental-Rights Extremism originated among homeschool activists and homeschooling parents who are now eager to see the isolation and disinformation they’ve successfully forced on homeschooled children applied to every child in the country. The end goal of this movement is to keep any kind of information that would contradict their authoritarian agenda away from children, as well as to bar them from accessing resources, such as mental health care, information about LGBTQ people, and reproductive education.
The way they plan to do this is by elevating parent’s rights to “fundamental parental rights.” Parents absolutely do have rights – that is not up for debate. However, those rights are not considered fundamental by modern constitutional definitions. It would be extremely dangerous to grant parents “fundamental” rights over their children’s autonomy, as this would trigger a very challenging legal test (strict scrutiny) whenever legal protections conflict with parental actions. In other words, this makes it nearly impossible for the government to protect the ability of young people to exercise their own rights to safety, education, religious freedom, health care, or free speech. For more information on why parent’s rights aren’t currently seen as “fundamental,” please see the Coalition for Responsible Home Education’s legal brief on the issue.
As Parents’ Bill of Rights legislation continues to pass, we can expect to see two things happen. Firstly, one of these bills’ primary architects is Michael Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association, former president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, and one of the authors of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). For people like Farris and his colleagues at the Heritage Foundation, litigation has always been their primary focus. These bills were written by a litigator in order to provide litigation options for Parental-Rights Extremists to sue school districts and other agencies, with the eventual goal of bringing a case before the US Supreme Court. In much the same way that RFRA has been used as a litigation tool to expand and constitutionalize religious rights, these bills would be used to expand and constitutionalize parental rights, at the expense of young people.
Secondly, these new laws will make it incredibly difficult for public schools to continue offering an accurate, empowering education that prepares children for an open future. As we’re already seeing, Parental-Rights Extremists will continue to attack public schools for offering accurate information about US history, sex and gender, and science. We can look to the fate of many homeschooled children to see the eventual conclusion – children indoctrinated into white supremacy, girls denied any education in math, STEM curriculum constantly being challenged and undermined, and US history distorted and warped with propaganda. This is a fate we should all be earnestly seeking to avoid.
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is here and ready to assist anyone who would like to join in this fight. We have decades of experience with the founders and leaders of this movement, and we know from our own experiences as homeschool alumni what their next steps are and how to effectively fight them. Everyone working to oppose this hateful and destructive agenda should keep in mind: children have rights, parents have responsibilities.