Parents Losing Rights at Schoolhouse Door

Parents of 50 Million U.S. Children Soon to Lose Parental Rights
by Parental Rights

If your children attend public school, you are among those parents whose rights will end the moment your child enters the school. That’s because in 2005 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found in Fields v. Palmdale School District “that the Meyer-Pierce right [of parents to direct the upbringing of their children] does not exist beyond the threshold of the school door.”

You read that right. Parental Rights “[do] not exist beyond the threshold of the school door.”

“We conclude that the parents are possessed of no constitutional right to prevent the public schools from providing information on the subject [of sexuality] to their students in any forum or manner they select” (emphasis added).

Of course, most parents contend they don’t have a choice in where their children are schooled. Either economic constraints or personal circumstances leave them with no practical alternative to the local public school. And that leaves no parental rights at all.

The courts’ disregard for the traditional formative role of parents in a child’s life needs to be brought to light. And while the Parental Rights Amendment will not give parents any greater power to control the school’s choice of curriculum, it will protect their right to pull their individual child out of any program of an outrageous or offensive nature, like the program in the Palmdale case.