Building a Legal Bulwark to Defend Families
There is no question that the battle over parental rights is heating up. While parents have won electoral and legislative victories across the nation in recent months, those who think government bureaucrats, and not parents, should decide how our children are raised, educated, and nurtured, are not meekly surrendering.
The fight over the heart and soul of our children is just beginning.
To that end, and thanks to your financial support in the past, the Parental Rights Foundation is building the capacity to fight for parents and children in our nation’s state and federal courts. Already, we have been active in litigation (including our on-going lawsuit against the District of Columbia in federal court, and our on-going lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Virginia in state court) and in filing amicus briefs with courts around the nation.
Weighing in on Parental Rights
Amicus briefs (literally “amicus curiae” which is Latin for “friend of the court”) allow us to bring our scholarship and research to support parents in courts. While we are not a party to these lawsuits, when we hear of cases that will impact constitutional protections for families in the future, either for good or bad, we file amicus briefs to urge courts to respect the fundamental right of parents to direct the education, upbringing, and care of their precious children.
We filed one of our amicus briefs with the federal appeals court for the 10th Circuit, arguing that strip searches of minor children by CPS investigators are harmful to children. We filed another brief with the federal appeals court for the 9th Circuit, arguing that the U.S. Constitution’s protection of parental rights as a fundamental right should extend to any interference by the government into a fit and loving parent’s care of their child. And we filed another recent amicus brief with the Texas Supreme Court, arguing that (in the context of a visitation dispute) Texas should not override a parent’s decisions over who spends time with his minor child unless there is evidence of parental unfitness.
Now we’re expanding our legal reach. Our team is currently working on another amicus brief on a grandparent visitation case pending before the Texas Supreme Court regarding the standard of evidence that must be shown regarding parental unfitness. We have been approached by numerous organizations and individuals about helping in other cases. And we know that even more parental rights cases are headed to the courts in the coming months.
Training a New Generation
So, we’re looking to expand our legal team to meet the increasing need to protect children by empowering parents. And along with additional staff, we also know that today’s law school students are tomorrow’s lawyers, prosecutors, and judges.
With that in mind, we have recently started, for the first time ever, a Parental Rights Foundation legal internship program. We sent our legal intern announcements to numerous law schools across the nation, and we’re pleased to announce that two exceptional law school students have been accepted and have already begun research projects supporting our work to defend, protect, and advance the God-given right of parents to nurture and care for their children.
Our internships benefit law school students by providing them with opportunities to be directly mentored by our team of dedicated lawyers and legal scholars so that they better understand the importance of our legal system’s protections for parental rights. And our internship program benefits families by training these law students, the lawyers and judges of tomorrow, in the importance of protecting parental rights.
We’ll introduce you to our interns in coming weeks. If you know an exceptionally sharp and dedicated law school student who may be interested in interning with our office in the fall semester, please have them email us with their interest and resume to info@parentalrights.org. These internships are remote, so an intern can participate from literally anywhere in the country. We hope, as funding increases, that we can one day soon expand these internships into a legal fellowship program.
Thank you for standing with us. Because of your support, I am excited about the future of parental rights. If you’d like to donate a one-time or recurring monthly tax-deductible gift of any amount to help us expand our legal work, please click here.