On May 21, the New York Court of Appeals struck down a proposed state program to evade court oversight in providing an “alternative to formal foster care arrangements.” The case is Lawyers for Children v. OCFS . In 2022, New York’s Office for Children and Family Services launched a new program called Host Family Homes, creating a new pathway for separating families without using formal foster care. Opponents of the program, including Lawyers for Children, The Legal Aid Society of New York, and the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo Inc., argued that the legislature never authorized such a move and that the Office lacked authority to do so on its own initiative. The Parental Rights Foundation joined an amicus brief expressing concerns that the program’s absence of court oversight fails to protect families’ rights. The Host Family Homes program was announced in December of 2021 , and “the state describes the program as ‘temporarily supporting a family when a parent has made a determination that he/she is unable to care for their child’ and has made an informed agreement ‘to allow a host family to care for his or her child as a way to avert the need for more child welfare intervention’,” according to an April 2022 report from ProPublica . The problem, critics of the program argue, is that the program doesn’t include the rules and requirements for protecting children and family rights provided by the state’s existing avenues for placement. This includes existing laws allowing families to voluntarily place their children with others, as well as laws allowing the state’s agencies to take custody of children and place them in foster care. The Host Homes program provides no judicial oversight, no requirement to provide preventative services, nor any requirement to prioritize placement with kin when a child must be separated from a parent. The brief we signed onto, penned by Josh Gupta-Kagan of Columbia Law School's Family Defense Clinic, points out that “Hidden foster care is a coercive practice that strips parents of procedural rights and leads to unnecessary separations.” And for all its good intentions, “[t]he Host Family Homes regulation would create a new form of hidden foster care.” In 2025, the New York Superior Court, which is the state’s appeals court, sided with the agency in a 3-2 decision allowing the program to move forward. The two dissenting justices, though, issued a stinging opinion of their own in which they warned that “OCFS has gone rogue,” creating a program that outs children “in an administrative mousetrap with no way out.” The litigants immediately appealed to the state’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, which ruled unanimously (7-0) in their favor on May 21 (2026). Writing for the court, Justice Cannataro pointed out several problems with the program. “Under the program, courts need not approve placements lasting longer than 30 days, nor are they required to assess the well-being of the child if they have been left in foster care for over eight months. Because the courts are not involved, the State need not provide assigned counsel to the parents or children to advocate for them during these mandatory hearings. OCFS is likewise not required to identify known friends or relatives who might care for the child, nor offer any government-paid preventive services, before allowing parents to access host family care.” It is precisely this lack of court oversight and legal representation that concerned the Parental Rights Foundation and led us to sign on to the amicus brief. In the court’s conclusion, Cannataro added, “Respondents created the Host Family Homes program to offer parents an alternative means of temporarily placing out their children in times of difficulty. The governing law does not permit them to do so.” We are grateful for the opportunity to have weighed in on this case and gratified that the court ultimately heard our concerns and ended the state’s program. And I am grateful to each of you for standing with us to protect children by empowering parents in New York and across the country.
In this episode, Emilie Kao, senior counsel and vice president of advocacy strategy for Alliance Defending Freedom and member of the Parental Rights Foundation Board of Advisors, joins us to discuss her article “Preserving Childhood: Dependency, Consent, and Parental Rights in Healthcare,” featured in The State of Parental Rights in America . Emilie explores the legal foundations of parental rights in healthcare decision-making, the Supreme Court’s parental rights precedent, and the historical understanding of childhood dependency and parental responsibility. The conversation also examines the rise of the “mature minor” doctrine and its growing role in healthcare policy. Emilie discusses how policy-driven consent standards developed, the major areas where the doctrine is most frequently applied today, and the tension between parental authority, state interests, and adolescent autonomy. She also explains why these debates matter for families, healthcare policy, and constitutional protections moving forward. The EPPiC Broadcast is hosted by Michael Ramey, President of the Parental Rights Foundation. Stay informed on parental rights news by signing up for email alerts at https://parentalrightsfoundation.org/get-involved/ .
Last month, the Parental Rights Foundation proudly announced the release of our first-ever State of Parental Rights in America (SOPRA) publication. Today, we are thrilled to bring it to the EPPiC Broadcast . EPPiC stands for “Empowering Parents, Protecting Children,” and the EPPiC Broadcast is the official podcast of the Parental Rights Foundation. Each week, I host a half-hour conversation with a scholar, lawyer, or thought leader in the realm of parental rights. This season , we have featured Kelly Fong and Frank Edwards, Vernadette Broyles, Will Estrada, Sharon Balmer-Cartagena, Alex Cinney and Toia Potts, David Kelly, Layal Bou Harfouch, Allison Green and Natalece Washington, and our new board chairman, William Wagner. Topics ranged from Fong and Edwards’ recent study on the connection between child abuse mortality rates and the number of children taken into foster care (spoiler: there is none!), to a discussion of parental rights cases then before the U.S. Supreme Court, to homeschool freedom, to the benefits of pre-petition counsel for parents, to children’s counsel in CPS cases. Now we’re finishing our twelfth season with two of the authors from this year’s SOPRA publication. May 12: Joyce McMillan The May 12 episode features Joyce McMillan, a left-leaning thought leader and parent activist, whose SOPRA article, “Common Sense Guardrails for CPS,” we unpack on the show. We discuss Joyce’s assertion that Child Protective Services, or CPS, is a carceral apparatus, not a social service system , and that as such, it should be subject to the same due process restrictions as law enforcement. Joyce also shares stories of parents caught in the system, and how recent legislative efforts in New York state are starting to move the needle in favor of keeping families free from unnecessary investigations and intrusions. Joyce is a straight shooter who turned her own tragic experience with the system into a thirty-year service to similarly-situated families. As the founder and executive director of Just Making a Change for Families ( JMAC for Families ), she has helped countless families navigate the treacherous waters of a CPS investigation while lending her voice to so many more. I am honored to have her on our Board of Advisors , and it was a privilege to speak to her for the EPPiC Broadcast . I hope you’ll take a few minutes this week to hear what she had to say. May 19: Emilie Kao Then on May 19, we’ll feature Emilie Kao, (pronounced “Gow,” rhymes with “now”) a conservative scholar and attorney, whose SOPRA article, “Preserving Childhood: Dependency, Consent, and Parental Rights in Healthcare,” fuels our conversation. Emilie shares with me how the “mature minor” doctrine arose in the twentieth century and why it should be discarded in favor of a return to the “parental presumption” that it replaced. It’s a move that would have far-reaching policy implications, but for those who support parental rights, Emilie says, it’s the right thing to do. Children, she says, are not yet ready to make such serious decisions on their own, and parents are their best and surest source of guidance. As senior counsel and vice president of advocacy strategy for Alliance Defending Freedom , Emilie is an eminent scholar in the area of parental rights, having professional experience at Heritage Foundation, the Office of International Religious Freedom at the U.S. Department of State, and even at the United Nations in Geneva. Now we are honored to have her on our Board of Advisors . Emilie has spoken on the role of the family before the United Nations in New York and in Geneva, and before the U.S. Congress in Washington. Next week, I hope you’ll tune in to hear her unpack a bit of family policy just for us in this one-on-one conversation. It was a privilege to host her on the EPPiC Broadcast. What’s Next? After Emilie’s episode, the EPPiC Broadcast will take a break for the summer, starting work in just the next few weeks to bring you new and engaging episodes starting again in September. Please take a moment to share the EPPiC Broadcast with your friends and family who can benefit from serious discussion about the need for parental rights protection in law and policy. And consider making a donation to keep the program on the air. (Like all of the Parental Rights Foundation’s work, the EPPiC Broadcast is completely donor supported.) As always, thank you for standing with us, and with these thought leaders from both sides of the political aisle, in protecting children by empowering parents.
Last week I attended the policy summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council, an association of conservative policy organizations, private sector organizations, and state lawmakers, to present the need to take up reform legislation. Specifically, I presented the need to replace “anonymous reporting” with “confidential reporting” to child abuse hotlines. The following is taken from…
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Ideas that take root in the United Nations have an unsettling tendency to eventually make their way into America’s courtrooms. That’s why the Parental Rights Foundation submitted a comment to the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Child Privacy last month, urging respect for the privacy of the child’s family and home, and not just the…
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The second season of the Parental Rights Podcast launched Tuesday, under a different name: the EPPiC Broadcast. Launched in January of this year, the Parental Rights Podcast’s first season featured such guests as the Jennifer Pelletier family, law professor Maxine Eichner, New York City activist Joyce McMillan, and constitutional law professor William Wagner. Season one…
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