Celebrating 100 Years of Pierce

The Parental Rights Foundation and the EPPiC Broadcast are joining other pro-family organizations in celebrating “100 Years of Pierce.” The Supreme Court released its landmark parental rights decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters on June 1, 1925—exactly 100 years ago next month.

When in the Court’s most recent parental rights case (Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 65 (2000)) Justice O’Connor wrote for the plurality that “[t]he liberty interest at issue in this case—the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children—is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court,” she cited Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) as its foundation.

This is not to say that parental rights are given by the Supreme Court, nor by the government, nor even by the Constitution. These are “pre-political” rights, derived from nature before any government is ever involved. But the Supreme Court’s recognition of this liberty as a constitutionally protected right had its beginnings in Meyer and Pierce.

The Court in Pierce famously declared,

The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.

Stemming from that clear pronouncement, parental rights have become among the most universally recognized rights in American jurisprudence. Since Pierce, the Court had uniformly recognized the liberty of parents to direct the lives of their minor children without interference by the government.

Unfortunately, this Supreme Court recognition is not always reflected in the policies and practices of government institutions, including child welfare agencies, some public schools, and even many lower courts and state courts.

But the precedent is firmly established, thanks to Pierce.

To celebrate this milestone, I gathered two special panels on the EPPiC Broadcast, the official podcast of the Parental Rights Foundation. (EPPiC stands for Empowering Parents, Protecting Children, which is the heartbeat of the Foundation.)

The first panel, which I affectionately call “the left panel,” will be released on Tuesday, May 13, and features stellar left-of-center family defense scholars Martin Guggenheim, Angela Burton, and Josh Gupta-Kagan.

The second panel, affectionately called “the right panel,” will be released the following Tuesday, May 20. Right-of-center scholars Michael Farris, Melissa Moschella, and Emilie Kao make up that panel.

For years I have proudly pointed to our coalition and boasted that parental rights are a bipartisan issue. Policy giants and thought leaders on both sides of the political aisle agree on the foundation that Pierce has laid. (For example, all six panelists named above also serve on the Parental Rights Foundation’s Board of Advisors.)

But for those same years, we have featured these scholars on our podcast episodes and discussed the things we have in common rather than the ways we differ. We have inadvertently made it easy to imagine we’re really not so different after all.

With this two-part series, we have broken that mold, encouraging “the left panel” to speak from the left and “the right panel” to speak from the right. If you listen to both panels, you will certainly hear something you disagree with.

And I did this on purpose. But not to drive a wedge between us. Rather, I wanted our audience to hear just how diverse we are in other political matters.

I want you to hear for yourself just how different you may be from other people who, despite those differences, still stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you in the belief that children belong with the loving, fit parents who know and love them best.

Some of us champion parental rights out of a desire to keep the government out of our religious and education choices. Others of us champion parental rights to keep an agency from taking our children away just because we struggle to make enough to live on, or because our skin is the wrong color.

For all of us, our parental rights are like a boat, and we each have leaks to plug in our own end of the boat. But at the end of the day, it is the same boat—and to protect our children we must work together until every leak is filled.

So, we celebrate together the legacy of Pierce and 100 years of parental rights recognition, working together from both sides of the political aisle and from every walk of life to protect our children.

Together, we can make the next hundred years even greater for America’s families.