Tag Archives: Topic: Parental Rights

Associated Press: “The parents of a New Hampshire teenager are asking school officials to stop teachers from using a book that refers to Jesus Christ as a ‘wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist.’”

ADF attorney Joe Infranco appeared on the Mike Gallagher Show to discuss this: Swedish government’s 18-month-long seizure of 9-year-old boy pushing parents to emotional brink. | MP3 12:03 mins

ADF attorney Roger Kiska appeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss this: Swedish government’s 18-month-long seizure of 9-year-old boy pushing parents to emotional brink. | MP3 runs 14:51 mins

CNBC: “An Anchorage Superior Court judge is expected to rule by early next week on a lawsuit seeking to block the parental notification law approved by voters in August.”

For more information on the topic, see this ADF Alliance Alert compound tag: http://www.alliancealert.org/tag/state-alaska+topic-parental-rights+topic-abortion/

Ventura County Star [AP]: “A West Virginia woman urged a federal appeals court Thursday to reinstate her lawsuit claiming that Mingo County school officials violated her religious rights by insisting that her daughter receive state-mandated immunizations. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the case and is expected to rule in a few weeks.”

OneNewsNow: “According to a new mental health survey, parents must accept the alternative sexual lifestyles of their children to prevent suicide, drug abuse, and depression. But one expert believes the study is biased.”

OneNewsNow: “‘This is just really a state drunk with its own power trying to justify a decision that was wrong from the beginning,’ the [ADF Attorney Roger Kiska] contends. ‘These parents are the parents; they have the right to educate their child the way that they think is best for Domenic, and they shouldn’t be punished in this manner.’”

John Culhane, Professor of Law at Widener University, writing at 365Gay.com: “First, [Gallagher is] right that civil unions and domestic partnerships are leading to marriage. Here’s some evidence: In Vermont, the first state to create the civil union, the legislature moved to full marriage equality in less than 10 years. Why? I’m sure each law-maker had his or her own reasons, but among them was surely a recognition – informed by a decade of experience and the report of a civil union commission – that this creative half-step was inadequate, confusing, and – most centrally – discriminatory.”

Iona Institute: “In an editorial today, the paper endorsed controversial proposals made by the Law Reform Commission (LRC) last December which would allow minors aged 14 to 16 to be prescribed the Pill without parental consent.”

Robin’s Readings and Reflections: “Currently both the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) and the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) are examining all available avenues to help reunite the family. However, short of a miracle, it is unlikely that anything can be done. So we must pray for a miracle. It is just possible that if enough international pressure is brought to bear on the Swedish government, that they will be forced to re-evaluate their decision.”

“In 1995, legislators in the Illinois General Assembly passed the Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act; but due to legal challenges by the ACLU and their allies, the law has been enjoined for 15 years . . . ”

Friends of Domenic Johansson: “To the best of our knowledge, Sweden continues to hold this father in jail. The original information we received said he’d have some sort of trial on December 10th. However, we are now learning that the trial can be held as late as December 14th or 15th and it seems this might be the case. Sweden will NOT take Christer to trial until they have a psychiatric finding assigned to him.”

Christian Newswire: “The government shouldn’t abduct and imprison children simply because it doesn’t like homeschooling. That’s exactly what happened here,” said Alliance Defense Fund Legal Counsel Roger Kiska, who is based in Europe. “Despite the ill-advised decision on the part of Mr. Johansson, the only menace here is a government drunk with its own power. This sad circumstance is what happens when an over-powerful government pushes a parent to the point of desperation, so social services should not pretend to be surprised.” HSLDA, in partnership with ADF, has appealed the Johansson case to the European Court of Human Rights.

After seizing a child from his parents and holding him in custody with virtually no visitation for 1 1/2 years because he was home-schooled, the Swedish government has now jailed the boy’s father for taking his son home from a supervised visitation when he wasn’t supposed to last week.

Bill Muehlenberg’s Culture Watch: “. . . The second trend is also fully explicable. Secular leftist states know that if they can get access to children from early on, and for many years, they can easily instill their agenda, their values, and their worldview into the children. And as the state’s ideology and worldview becomes increasingly hostile to that of the Judeo-Christian worldview, then you can expect states to definitely frown upon homeschooling . . . Take a look at Sweden, home of Ikea and Volvos. A couple months ago in June, attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund and the Home School Legal Defense Association filed Johansson v. Sweden with the European Court of Human Rights so that that the Swedish government will return a seven-year-old homeschooled boy to his parents. Dominic Johansson was forcibly seized by Swedish authorities from his parents in June 2009 after they had boarded a plane in their move to India. The reason? He was homeschooled.”

The Local: “Corporal punishment, formally outlawed in Sweden in 1979, was a regular feature of three of the couple’s four children’s lives, the Värmland district court heard . . . The court found that ‘despite the details of the case at hand the parents had a loving and caring relationship to their children’, but that the systematic treatment metered out was in breach of the law and deserving of a custodial sentence.”

Irish Central: “The time has come to address the central role of religion in schools, the Irish government has been told. In a discussion paper presented by the Irish Human Rights Commission (IHCR) this week ministers were told that the religious ethos of most Irish schools may be a breach of the human rights of some children.”

Via The Volokh Conspiracy: “The case is Charara v. Yatim (Mass. Ct. App., decided today) [opinion can be accessed at this link]: ‘Following a trial, a judge of the Probate and Family Court concluded that no deference was due the custody order issued by a Jaafarite religious tribunal (Jaafarite Court) in Lebanon. The probate judge based his decision on evidence, including the testimony of experts, that the Jaafarite Court’s custody order was not made in “substantial conformity” with Massachusetts law regarding the best interests of the children . . . ”

Pacific Justice Institute: “A heated controversy in this Bay Area city over mandatory pro-gay curricula for all students has taken an unexpected twist that is leaving gay activists and the ACLU scrambling to explain why a film shown to elementary students portrays African-American families in a negative light.”

The Iona Institute: “A judge who has given permission to the HSE to administer drugs to a baby at risk of HIV against the wishes of the mother said it was not a question of the State ‘acting as a superpower’ or ‘nanny knows best.’ The case shows once again that the law as it stands already allows the State to override the wishes of parents in certain circumstances.”

ACLU Blog of Rights: “On Friday, the ACLU joined with Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights in challenging a law that requires a teen to notify a parent or go to court before having an abortion. It is critical that laws like this don’t go unchallenged. I know from my own experience how bad these laws can be.”

Adam Freedman writing at Ricochet: “[The City Council of Davenport, IA] passed a law requiring parents to exercise control over their minor children. The law said that if a child has two or more episodes of delinquency (resulting in a complaint filed in court), there will be a ‘presumption’ that the parent violated his or her duty . . . The Iowa Supreme Court has struck down that part of the law that creates a rebuttable presumption against parents.”

Amazon.com description for Licensing Families by Michael McFall: “In Licensing Parents, Michael McFall argues that political structures, economics, education, racism, and sexism are secondary in importance to the inequality caused by families, and that the family plays the primary role in a child’s acquisition of a sense of justice. He demonstrates that examination of the family is necessary in political philosophy and that informal structures (families) and considerations (character formation) must be taken seriously. McFall advocates a threshold that should be accepted by all political philosophers: children should not be severely abused or neglected because child maltreatment often causes deep and irreparable individual and societal harm.” | Via Mirror of Justice.

Mercury News: “The ‘Respect for All’ short films involved in that curriculum have come under fire from parents who believe their elementary school-aged children should not be learning about gay and lesbian families. They also believe that parents should be notified and be able to pull their children from the lessons.”

Vallejo, CA debates “pro-gay” film for elementary students

LifeNews: “Yesterday, the Thomas More Society took another step toward the long-overdue enforcement of Illinois’ Parental Notice of Abortion Act by filing a ‘friend of the court’ brief in the Illinois Appellate Court on behalf of a bipartisan group of Illinois state attorneys.” Thomas More Society press release | Brief is here.

Iona Institute: “A group promoting the rights of unmarried fathers has called for the compulsory registration of fathers on birth certificates. Launching a new document on family law, the group, Families, Fathers and Friends, also called for all fathers to be made legal guardians of their children from birth.”

KXLH: “The recent adoption by the Helena School District of a controversial new sex-education curriculum has sparked some residents to organize a symposium for parents to address the issue and explore their options.”

EarnedMedia: “The controversy centers around three films, ‘That’s a Family,’ ‘Let’s Get Real,’ and ‘Straightlaced,’ that promote the idea that gay relationships are just as normal as any other family structure. The films are being mandated as part of a legal settlement between the ACLU and VCUSD. A parent questioned the District’s refusal to allow objecting families to opt out of the instruction, which has been mandated for all students in the District – including first-graders. The Vallejo City Unified School District governing board will hear from the community and discuss the issue Wednesday night beginning at 5 p.m.”

Toronto Sun: “The fight between two Calgary gay ex-lovers over custody of their daughter could advance same-sex parenthood rights in Alberta, says one of the litigants. The man says Court of Queen’s Bench is expected to rule Dec. 8 on whether the province will be paying his past and future legal fees in a four-year battle that could fill a void in Alberta’s Family Law Act that fails to legally define gay men as fathers.”

The Northern Virginia Daily: “After months of debate, the Warren County School Board on Thursday entered a first reading of an amended religious exemption regulation to gain release for compulsory school attendance . . . Homeschooling advocates and parents had consistently protested the required letter explaining religious beliefs, saying it was potentially restrictive to religious freedoms.”

The Straits Times: “Malaysia’s top court on Friday sidestepped a ruling on whether children can be converted to Islam by one parent, a lawyer said, in a case closely watched by the nation’s non-Muslim minorities.”

Medical News Today: “An Albuquerque, N.M., Public Schools committee voted in favor of a revised policy that will allow contraception to be dispensed at school-based clinics by clinic staff who are not APS employees, the Albuquerque Journal reports.”

Christian Law Journal: “Several local and national organizations such as: Alliance Defense Fund, the Justice Foundation’s Against Forced Abortion, Texas Alliance for Life, and the Austin Coalition for Life took interest in the girl’s case. The girl’s representatives proceeded to file a temporary restraining order against her parents when they discovered how overbearing they acted towards their daughter.”

[T]he primary difference between an open society and a totalitarian one is that the former respects the parent’s right to morally form their children, while the latter believes the state’s moral viewpoint should be imposed even in the home . . .

HSLDA: “In a carefully worded letter to ‘Parent[s] and/or School Administrator[s],’ the Morongo USD notified homeschooling families that if the school district receives a complaint, the school district has an obligation to investigate the parent for violation of compulsory education laws, i.e, truancy.”

HSLDA: “In an exciting nationwide first, Missouri now allows parents to issue work certificates for their own children if they follow certain requirements . . . now a parent can be the ‘issuing officer’ for a work certificate if the various requirements are met.”

Christian Post: “[Kevin Theriot], an attorney with Alliance Defense Fund, said [Superintendent Mike Potts'] response would be constitutional only if no other groups were allowed to distribute material at the school. He said Bible distribution outside the school is constitutional. ‘Certainly distributing Bibles on the sidewalk or outside of the school is protected speech. They cannot discriminate against the distribution of the Bible because it’s religious,’ Theriot told The Christian Post.”

Balancing Public Health and Individual Choice: A Proposal for a Federal Emergency Vaccination Law
Sara Mahmoud-Davis, 20 Health Matrix 219 (2010)

“Part I discusses the relationship between vaccinations and informed consent, including exemptions. Part II examines the scientific foundation for compulsory vaccination law and looks at the inherent tension between immunization exemptions and the public health. Part III establishes the constitutional basis for permitting religious exemptions and conditional rights of refusal, while excluding philosophical opt-outs. Part IV presents arguments in favor of a federal emergency vaccination law and proposes amending the Federal Public Health Service Act. Finally, Part V explains how the mass vaccination clinics would operate and describes the informed consent and opt-out process.”

MLive.com (Jackson Citizen Patriot): “Jonesville Community Schools is ending a Bible distribution program at Williams Elementary School after a parent raised concerns, the superintendent said.”

Joanna L. Grossman writing at FindLaw: “One aspect of Nguyen that might help Ruben Flores-Villar — the individual whose fate is at issue in the case the Court will soon consider — is that, in Nguyen, the Court did at least purport to apply the heightened scrutiny appropriate for sex-based classifications, rather than a special, weaker standard potentially justified by the naturalization context. (Flores-Villar also makes an age-discrimination claim, but that claim is entitled only to a lower form of review.)” | Part 1 is here.

ADF Weekly Update: School choice: a parent’s right under attack

Joanna L. Grossman writing at FindLaw: “On November 10, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in United States v. Flores-Villar, a case that considers the citizenship rights of children born to U.S.-citizen fathers and non-U.S.-citizen mothers.

The New American: “Another child was saved in Texas when pro-life volunteers witnessed a 16-year-old girl being coerced by her parents into having an abortion . . . ‘The right not to have an abortion is protected by law, and this right isn’t relinquished just because someone else considers the child to be an unwanted burden,’ ADF Legal Counsel [Matt Bowman] told the Catholic News Agency.”

ADF Attorney Matt Bowman appeared on In the Market with Janet Parshall to discuss this: Parents stopped from forcing Texas teen to have abortion | MP3 audio runs 9:01 mins

ADF Attorney Gregory S. Baylor writing at Speak Up Movement / University: “The Washington Post editorial board agrees with ADF that Arizona’s school choice tax credit is constitutionally permissible . . . The key line in the Post editorial: ‘The program is driven by a series of private choices that do not involve the government.’”

OneNewsNow: “‘They had tried to argue that this was somehow government money,’ [ADF Attorney David Cortman] explains. ‘But, of course, the argument we made [was that] it was private people making private donations to private organizations — and simply because religious schools participate [in the program], it doesn’t violate the Constitution.’”

Christian Post: “‘Parents should be able to choose what school their children attend and where their money goes. Just because religious schools can join the program on the same basis as non-religious ones doesn’t make it unconstitutional,’ said [ADF Attorney David Cortman].”

NPR reports High court weighs tax credit for religious schools: “Mr. PAUL BENDER: ‘Sixty-five percent of the whole program went out on the basis of religion. You get this scholarship only if you send your kid to the religious school that I designate.’ TOTENBERG: ‘But [David Cortman] of the Arizona Christian Schools Tuition Association disagreed.’ Mr. DAVID CORTMAN (Arizona Christian Schools Tuition Association): ‘Not a dime goes to any school, religious or secular, unless the parent decides, number one, that their child will attend that school; and number two, that they apply for a scholarship.’”

The Christian Institute: “ADF Legal Counsel [Matt Bowman] said: ‘The right not to have an abortion is protected by law, and this right isn’t relinquished just because someone else considers the child to be an unwanted burden.’”

Marcia Coyle writing at The National Law Journal: “The Supreme Court, in separate arguments on Wednesday, waded into two difficult parts of the Constitution that traditionally have divided the justices: religion and preemption.”

SCOTUSblog: “The transcript of today’s oral argument in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn is now available here . . . ”

Arizona Republic: “‘There is a very important philosophical point here,’ [Justice Alito] said sternly. ‘You think that all the money belongs to the government except to the extent that it deigns to allow private people to keep some of it’ . . . Outside the court, [David Cortman], a Georgia lawyer for the Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization, told reporters that the private-school tax credit is only one of many options Arizona offers to trim taxpayer debt. ‘It’s simply not the government’s money until you reach the bottom line of the tax form, and no sooner,’ he said.”

The Christian Century (RNS): “Is a state law that allows tax credits for donations to scholarship programs unconstitutional if most of the recipients attend religious schools? . . . The Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization in the case, said in a court filing that the percentage of religiously affiliated STOs in the program has dropped from 94 percent in 1998 to 67 percent in 2009.”

Los Angeles Times: “The Obama administration upset liberals as well as the president’s two Supreme Court appointees Wednesday by arguing that ordinary citizens have no legal right to go to court to challenge the government if it uses tax money to fund religious schools.”

Update: Religion Clause has the relevant excerpts from the transcript.

ADF attorney David Cortman is featured in one of the podcasts. He provides an excellent overview of the litigation and its stakes.

CBN News: “‘This program is important to the millions of Americans who support school choice across the country,’ [ADF Attorney David Cortman] said. ‘And Arizona is trying to increase their scores by giving parents a choice whether they want to go to public schools, charter schools or private schools, and this is just another prong in that.’” | Post includes video:

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: “Remarkably, Acting Solicitor General Neal K. Katyal appeared before the justices to argue on behalf of the program. For some reason, the Obama administration thought it would be a good idea to join groups like TV preacher Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Liberty Counsel, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Christian Legal Society, the Alliance Defense Fund and others supporting this ill-conceived plan.”

ABQJournal: “It cuts across all of that — stepparents, divorced parents, live-in relations, baby sitters, nannies,” says Rep. Al Park, an Albuquerque Democrat, who along with Sen. Mark Boitano, an Albuquerque Republican, plans to introduce a bill next legislative session to more clearly define what legally constitutes a parent. “It is a basic rule of law that the natural parents and the legal guardians have a paramount right to raise their children almost without interference. You don’t get a special right merely by being a roommate or a caregiver.”

FRCblog: “It is a tragic consequence of the civil ‘right’ that, unfortunately, Lisa Miller, fought for – and now has to live in spite of. Only this time, an innocent child suffers at the hands of adults in a political milieu where the innocent loses and no one, especially little Isabella, wins.”

Darren Rosenblum, Professor at Pace Law School, writing at The Huffington Post: “Recently, President Obama posted an ‘It Gets Better’ message to teens. The Obama message goes far to encourage LGBT teens to realize that it gets better but fails to speak to the people that really matter in these teens’ lives: their parents . . . Kids whose parents are homophobes have no safe haven from their bullying.”

Phyllis Schlafly writing at Townhall: “A new study casts doubt on the value of CPS. . . The researchers concluded that CPS’s intervention did little or nothing to improve the lives of the children . . . Two cases involving Child Protective Services are now before the U.S. Supreme Court . . . Camreta and Alford v. Greene.”

The Sun News: “[A Charleston County mother] said her daughter was taken to the clinic by someone who worked for Carolina Empowerment Group, a nonprofit community organization whose goal is to increase awareness of and prevent teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS and substance abuse. The group has an office at Burke High and access to students, but the school district doesn’t pay for its services.”

OneNewsNow: “A court intervention has saved the life of an unborn baby in Texas . . . ‘It was a difficult choice for the girl to make to have to involve help from the outside, including legal assistance from ADF attorneys, but she felt that the life of her baby was worth it,” [ADF Attorney Steve Aden] notes.”

Catholic News Agency: “‘The right not to have an abortion is protected by law, and this right isn’t relinquished just because someone else considers the child to be an unwanted burden,’ said ADF Legal Counsel [Matt Bowman]. ‘This situation illustrates what a difference it can make when a woman is more fully informed about the true nature of abortion.’”

“The Vermont Supreme Court says a family court was right to award custody of an 8-year-old girl to her non-biological mother in a lesbian custody case.”

ADF’s Weekly Update is on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waEIv-vbHZI

AFP: “A scheme launched on Monday to provide girls as young as 13 with access to the contraceptive pill without their parents’ knowledge has been defended by the NHS primary care trust running the service.”

The Christian Institute: “Girls as young as 13 on the Isle of Wight may be given a month’s supply of contraceptive pills without being referred to a doctor or informing their parents, under a divisive new scheme.”

WorldNetDaily: “‘The right not to have an abortion is protected by law, and this right isn’t relinquished just because someone else considers the child to be an unwanted burden,’ said ADF Legal Counsel [Matt Bowman]. ‘This situation illustrates what a difference it can make when a woman is more fully informed about the true nature of abortion.’”

Baptist Press: “A Travis County District Court judge authorized the order Oct. 28, one day after the parents agreed in writing no longer to coerce their daughter to abort her child, who is at 14 weeks gestation, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) reported.”

C-FAM: “Angry delegates took to the UN floor this week to denounce a report that promotes a new human right to explicit sexual education for young children . . . The report claims a new human right to sexual education citing non-binding recommendations and other UN reports including the controversial UNESCO guidelines on sexual education and the Yogyakarta Principles. The report’s author, Victor Muñoz, argues that States have an obligation to ensure this new right ‘from the early stages of life.’”

LifeNews: “The parents of a 16-year-old girl have backed down and are retreating from their attempt to force their daughter to have an abortion. They signed a court order Wednesday agreeing to not force their daughter to have an abortion against her will after she obtained legal help from the Alliance Defense Fund pro-life legal group . . . ‘The right not to have an abortion is protected by law, and this right isn’t relinquished just because someone else considers the child to be an unwanted burden,’ said ADF Legal Counsel [Matt Bowman].”

“The parents of a 16-year-old girl represented by Alliance Defense Fund allied attorneys signed a court order Wednesday agreeing to not force their daughter to have an abortion against her will.”

“The director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network in San Francisco, Lahl has become a lone voice for a message that many of her fellow evangelicals are uncomfortable hearing: If embryos are human lives, she argues, then it is time for Christians to be consistent about their moral objections and unite against IVF . . . Whatever their leaders think, evangelicals themselves have been using IVF widely, the numbers suggest . . . ”

“Canadians have been forced to consider, and reconsider, the ethics and the cultural attitudes at the heart of this eugenics contract: a contract undertaken between a woman, an anonymous donor and a doctor agreeing to create a human being who was not party to the contract and did not give assent to it.”