New Homeschoolers: Outlandish Restrictions Proliferate

Home School Legal Defense Foundation

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In Indiana, officials in several different school corporations have told parents that they must fill out the non-accredited nonpublic school withdrawal form that is only for high school students. Most of these parents were withdrawing elementary school students.

A family in the state’s Plymouth Community School Corporation was repeatedly harassed by school officials, receiving up to three calls a week. In these calls the respective school principals urged the family not to pull their children out of the district. The last straw was a 30-minute call warning that if the family did not forego homeschooling, officials would “contact the state and see what they have to say about this.”

Homeschool organization says public schools are blocking parents from withdrawing kids

FOX News

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T.J. Schmidt, a lawyer for the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which provides legal services to help parents meet requirements for transitioning children from public school to homeschool, said he's noticed an uptick in the number of parents trying to pull their kids from public school. And public schools, he said, are pushing back.
"We see this across the country," Schmidt said. "I've had school officials attempt to prevent or dissuade parents from pulling their kids out."

Allies for parental rights

World

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Homeschool advocacy groups have long followed parental rights cases since they often have ties to home education. The history of homeschooling is filled with tales of parents persecuted for wanting to educate their children at home. But homeschool advocacy groups typically get involved when a case relates more closely to homeschooling than Clay’s does, said Jim Mason, vice president of litigation and development for the Home School Legal Defense Association and president of the Parental Rights Foundation.

Clay’s custody battle is an exception, Mason said, but that could change: “We expect to see more of these kinds of cases with the breakup of the family and changing societal definitions of what constitutes a family.”

What You Need to Know About Religious School Case at the Supreme Court

Daily Signal

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Should families be able to use school choice tax credits on religious schools? That’s the question that’s at the heart of Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which the Supreme Court is hearing Wednesday. Heritage Foundation legal scholar and host of the podcast “SCOTUS 101” Elizabeth Slattery breaks down the case for us.

Wisconsin Parents Sue To Keep Schools From Hiding Their Kids’ Gender Dysphoria

The Federalist

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Wisconsin’s second-largest school district so far won’t back off a policy of keeping minor students’ transgender experimentation secret from their parents despite a new lawsuit filed Tuesday.

A group of parents represented by Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty sued after the Madison Metropolitan School District refused to alter its policy of concealing childrens’ transgender behavior and related medical records from parents, no matter how young the child is. The district oversees children as young as preschoolers, and teaches gender identity politics to all ages, which research suggests may contribute to children identifying as transgender.

Supreme Court Is Poised to Deliver a Victory to School Choice Advocates

Public Discourse by Mark Movsesian

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Nonetheless, over the course of recent decades, the Court has become more accepting of the idea that state financial aid may reach religiously affiliated schools. For example, the Court has ruled that the Establishment Clause does not prevent a state from providing financial assistance on a neutral basis to parents, some of whom then use the assistance to help pay tuition at religiously affiliated schools. In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the Court held that a voucher program that gave parents the option to use state financial assistance at religiously affiliated schools did not violate the Establishment Clause, since the assistance reached the schools “wholly as a result of” the parents’ “own genuine and independent choice.” Such indirect aid for religiously affiliated schools, the Court held, is constitutionally permissible.

Arizona education board backs away from changes to sex ed language

Tuscon.com

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Facing a barrage of parental criticism, the state Board of Education decided Monday to scrap a proposal to remove certain language from the rules on sex education.

Several members of the appointed board said they are unwilling to consider the kind of changes being proposed, not just by gay-rights advocates on one side but a coalition of parents on the other who want even more restrictions on what can be taught. Armando Ruiz said that is the purview of elected state lawmakers.

“We’re not the Legislature,” he said.

Physical Interventions on the Bodies of Children to “Affirm” their “Gender Identity” Violate Sound Medical Ethics

Public Discourse by Ryan Anderson and Robert George

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Rather than teaching children to identify based on how well they fit prevailing cultural expectations on sex, we should be teaching them that the truth of their sexual identity is based on their bodies, and that sometimes cultural associations attached to the sexes are misguided or simply too narrow. There is a wonderfully rich array of ways of expressing one’s embodiment as male or female.

Summit on Protecting Children from Sexualization

Heritage Foundation

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This gathering of policy experts and practitioners will help us work together to advance conservative solutions to protect children from sexualization in culture, education, and healthcare. We seek to leverage our strengths and work together to protect the most vulnerable.

The program will dive into the increasingly early exposure of children to sexual messages, images, and themes at younger and younger ages, including through social media, school curriculum, and controversial medical treatments to treat gender dysphoria. The panelists will discuss the problems faced by parents and children, educators, and medical professionals and highlight why it's critical to preserve parental rights, freedom of conscience, and free speech in order to protect children from unwanted sexualization.

Parents Call Out School Board’s Transgender Policy Proposal

Daily Signal

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A group of concerned parents held a press conference just ahead of a scheduled Arlington County School Board meeting Tuesday evening about the adoption of a policy concerning transgender student protections in the school district.

“[Arlington Public Schools] has far overreached its authority in this matter, and needs to be reminded by concerned parents and community members that political and cultural pressures should never outweigh the school’s responsibility to make safe and healthy educational policy,” said Maria Keffler, spokeswoman for the Arlington Parent Coalition.

Mentally Disabled Woman Will No Longer Be Forced to Abort Her Child, After Court Reverses Ruling

Daily Signal

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An appeals court in the United Kingdom has overturned a previous ruling from a British court that ordered that a pregnant developmentally disabled woman have an abortion contrary to her own wishes and and her mother’s.

Justice Nathalie Lieven of England’s Court of Protection ruled that the woman must have a an abortion Friday. Lieven called the situation “heartbreaking,” and said, according to The New York Times, “I am acutely conscious of the fact that for the State to order a woman to have a termination where it appears that she doesn’t want it is an immense intrusion.”

Testimony On Massachusetts H. 3320 and S. 1209

Americans United for Life

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The Act would result in the expansion of abortion beyond what was permissible in Roe to any time it is “necessary to protect the patient’s life or physical or mental health.”1 The Act considers “health” to include all factors, including “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the person’s age” for the purposes of post-viability abortions.2 By intentionally creating a broad definition of “health,” the Act allows for abortion up to the moment of delivery of the child which effectively creates abortion on demand at any point in the pregnancy.

Equality Act Could Lead to More Parents Losing Custody of Kids Who Want ‘Gender Transition’

Daily Signal by Emilie Kao

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The transgender movement wants to dominate the field of medicine, and to do so it is threatening doctors and hospitals with penalties.

Some states have already passed laws similar to Pelosi’s Equality Act. In New Jersey and California, transgender activists have sued Catholic hospitals for “discrimination” on the basis of gender identity because they wouldn’t perform sex-change surgeries for patients with gender dysphoria.

These lawsuits may seem preposterous, but they were enabled by state anti-discrimination laws that treat sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes and health care facilities as public accommodations. The text of the Equality Act that was introduced in the 115th Congress does the same.

Reforming Health Care to Protect Parents' Rights

Heritage Foundation

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In pursuing health care reform, federal and state policymakers alike need to respect and protect paren­tal rights and responsibilities. Currently, they are not doing so.

A 14-year-old grade-school girl in Kentucky arrives at the local health clinic seeking birth control. Who should decide whether she receives it? The doctor? The girl? Or her parents? The state legislature says that the girl is not even old enough to consent to sexual activity. Yet public officials, under authorization from Congress, have written rules that allow the girl to enroll in one of a number of federal programs, and this federal law would overrule state law and prohibit the clinic from informing her parents.