While these two bills focused on homeschooling, the
same perspective on parental rights—that the state knows best, parents be
damned—can be seen in legislative branches throughout the country.
Two recent bills proposed by state legislators in Illinois and
Iowa reveal a disturbing perspective on parental rights that’s becoming more
prevalent in our country: the belief that parents cannot be trusted to care for
their children.
The Swiftly-Defeated
Illinois Bill
In Illinois,
a little over a week ago, Democratic state Rep. Monica Bristow introduced
House Bill 3560. That bill sought to amend the school code to require the Child
Protective Service unit of the Department of Children and Family Services to
investigate the home of a child being homeschooled “to ensure there is no
suspected child abuse or neglect in the home.” The proposed law would have
applied to every child being homeschooled, even when there was no reason to
suspect neglect or abuse.
The response of homeschooling families was swift. “We live in such
a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ culture,” Amy Kwilinski, an Illinois
homeschooling mom of six (including four with special needs) told The
Federalist. “It seems like our culture is headed toward a mistrust of
homeschooling, which might send us dangerously toward a German-like ban,”
Kwilinski added, noting that she plans to contact all of her elected officials.
Other
homeschooling parents apparently felt similarly, because within days of
Bristow’s bill being referred to the Rules Committee, the sponsor filed a motion
to table the bill. In less than a week, HB 3560 was dead.
Scott Woodruff, senior counsel with Home School Legal Defense
Association told The Federalist that Bristow’s “bill struck a raw nerve among
homeschool families.” “They don’t want to be treated like criminals. Who wants
to be investigated for child abuse for absolutely no other reason than choosing
to homeschool your child?” Woodruff said. “It also would have been a fabulous
waste of the limited time that child protective workers have to protect kids
who are in trouble,” Woodruff added.
A Different Bill
Attempts to Surveil Families In Iowa
While the
Illinois bill is essentially dead, a similar bill remains under consideration
in Iowa. Late last month, representatives in Iowa introduced a bill that would
require school districts to conduct “quarterly home visits to check on the
health and safety of children” being homeschooled. The bill specified that
“home visits shall take place in the child’s residence with the consent of the
parent, guardian, or legal custodian and an interview or observation of the
child may be conducted.”
Unlike the Illinois bill, which would have forced parents to allow
the government to investigate their homes and children before they could
homeschool—likely an unconstitutional condition—the Iowa bill at least
recognized that such inspections require the consent of the parent or guardian.
However, the following section stated that “if permission to enter the home to
interview or observe the child is refused, the juvenile court or district court
upon a showing of probable cause may authorize the person making the home visit
to enter the home and interview or observe the child.”
This
probable cause provision raises several red flags. First, the proposed bill
does not specify what there must be “probable cause” of. The most
reasonable interpretation would be “probable cause” of neglect or abuse, which
leads to the second point: The law already allows the
government to obtain a court order to enter a home upon a showing of “probable
cause” of neglect or abuse, so why the need to amend the code regulating homeschooling?
There is no
need. Rather, the Iowa bill would provide school officials the ability to bully
parents by demanding entry, knowing many homeschoolers would not realize they
could refuse to consent. For those parents who know their rights and exercise
them, they risk retaliation when the school districts later review the
objecting parents’ homeschool curriculum. Even worse, the school officials
might present unfounded claims of neglect to a court which, given the
normal ex parte (without notifying the parents of the court filing)
proceedings, may authorize the government’s invasion of the family’s home.
That the
Iowa bill seeks to target homeschool families under the auspices of “protecting
the children” seems clear when you consider the law already provides a
mechanism to enter homes when cause exists to believe children are suffering
from neglect or abuse. The bill’s backing from
the Iowa State Education Association, an association that
sells itself “an integral part of the 3 million-member National Education
Association,” is another huge tell.
Parents Are Not the
Enemy
Whether the Iowa bill, which has been in committee for nearly a
month, will suffer the same fate as the Illinois one is yet to be seen. But the
mere proposal of these bills should serve as a wake-up call to all parents of
the trend among policymakers to view them as the enemy. While these two bills
focused on homeschooling, the same perspective on parental rights—that the
state knows best, parents be damned—can be seen in legislative branches
throughout the country.
For
instance, in Indiana, last year the legislature gutted a law
that would have required schools to provide parents access to materials used
for instruction on sexual activity and gender identity and to obtain their
consent before “teaching” kids about gender identity. South Dakota’s
legislature recently killed a bill
expressly protecting a parent’s right to refuse to consent to health care
“treatment” for a child that would promote the child’s belief that he is a she,
or vice versa.
The aggressive move to replace a parent’s love, care, guidance,
and decision-making with whatever whim the experts of the bureaucratic state
currently profess is a disturbing and growing trend, and it threatens all
parents—not merely those homeschooling their children.
Margot
Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland served nearly 25
years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former
full-time faculty member and current adjunct instructor at the college of
business at the University of Notre Dame. The views expressed here are those of
Cleveland in her private capacity.
