Parental Rights News

Every year in the United States, more than 50,000 children lose their rights and access to their own parents through a process myopically called “termination of parental rights,” or TPR. A proposed bill in Pennsylvania, House Bill 133 , looks to address this problem in a modest way: by providing a process by which TPR can be reversed in certain situations. Not all circumstances lend themselves to this kind of reversal. First, after the passage of time, the parent must show that the underlying problems that led to the TPR order have been addressed. Parents who lost their children due to addiction, for instance, might need to show that they have successfully completed treatment and remained sober for some period of time. Second, the child must still be in need of a permanent home. Children who have been successfully adopted will not suddenly be uprooted from their new home and sent back to their parents. But children still languishing in the foster care system can be sent home with the court’s approval. Right now in Pennsylvania, a child can bounce from placement to placement and ultimately age out alone, even when there is a fit and loving parent just waiting to bring them home. The courts there have no path, no legal authorization, to return that child to a parent after TPR. Pennsylvania is not the first state to tackle reinstatement of parental rights. California passed the first such law in 2005 and ten states had passed similar statutes by 2010. Today, twenty-six states have some kind of parental reinstatement law on the books: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania HB 133 was introduced by Rep. Rick Krajewski (D-Philadelphia) in September of last year. The bill has fifteen cosponsors, including one Republican, Rep. Sheryl Delozier of Cumberland County. In legislative parlance, that 14-to-1 ratio makes this a “partisan bill,” Delozier’s support notwithstanding. But it shouldn’t be. Parental rights are a vital interest to all Americans, regardless of party, and restoring those rights whenever possible should be important to those on both sides of the aisle. Fortunately, support for the bill was bipartisan when it counted: the bill passed the 202-member Pennsylvania House of Representatives in June by a vote of 191 to 11. Every Democrat and 89 of 100 Republicans voted in favor. Now the bill is in the Senate, where it was referred to the Judiciary Committee on June 25. Frankly, I’d love to see TPR abolished entirely. Terminating parental rights should at least be used as a last resort, when the compelling governmental interest in a child’s safety cannot be met by any other, less restrictive means. (If parental rights are fundamental rights— and they are —then shouldn’t the termination of those rights require the ‘strict scrutiny’ standard accorded to other fundamental rights?) This is a conversation change that will take some time to bring about. Legal scholars Michael Farris and Vivek Sankaran contributed to it with their own discussion in season nine of our EPPiC Broadcast podcast. Now Krajewski’s bill provides another opportunity to move that conversation forward. If you live in Pennsylvania and your state senator is on the Senate Judiciary Committee , please take a moment to reach out and encourage them to take up HB 133 in committee and vote in favor. Urge them to recognize that the rights it would restore are important to all families , Republican and Democrat alike. If you don’t live in Pennsylvania, look for your state on the list above. If it’s not there, perhaps the effort could be taken up in your legislature in the coming session. Why not ask your state lawmaker to look at HB 133 and consider bringing the same law here? Working together, we can shift the conversation, and we can start to bring the children home—in every state. Thank you for standing with us to protect children by empowering parents through reinstatement laws like the one being discussed in Pennsylvania this year.

August is one of my favorite months because I get to see supporters like you start to create the legislative landscape of the coming year. It was in August of 2017 that volunteer Patti Sullivan first reached out to her state lawmaker, then-Rep. Erin Grall, to propose a parental rights bill in Florida. Rep. Grall told her she could give her 20 minutes; that turned into a two-and-a-half hour conversation. Now-Senator Grall, an attorney by trade, turned our humble fundamental parental rights model into a full-scale Parents’ Bill of Rights. And in 2021, it passed the legislature and was signed it into law. In 2018, we launched our “Resolutionary” campaign, and volunteer Esther in Indiana responded by reaching out to her lawmakers about a parental rights resolution. Her efforts brought in other nonprofit organizations in the state as the resolution morphed into a parental rights bill that passed in 2025. As amazing as these results were, the fact is that both ladies started out just like you. They read our newsletter because they cared about their families and about parental rights for all of us. But they didn’t stop at reading. They took the next step: they reached out to their lawmakers with language we provided and started a conversation about what is best for families. This year can be your turn! Perhaps, like Patti and Esther, you could take our model policies to your state lawmakers and ask them to champion a bill this coming session. For some lawmakers, election year means an arduous campaign will define the next three months. If we wait for that dust to settle before sharing a model with them, though, the legislative session will be right on top of us. And many lawmakers don’t have that concern because they are strong front-runners, or even running unopposed. So, the time to reach your lawmakers with a parental rights model is right now, this month, before campaigns get too crazy. A Model to Fit Every State Red states might be interested in our Fundamental Parental Rights model , which establishes in the legal code that parental rights are fundamental rights and that the state’s courts must apply strict judicial scrutiny —the highest level of review—to cases involving parental rights. Blue states might want to take up our Child Protection Investigations Reform Act , which requires child welfare investigators to notify parents of their rights from the very start of a child abuse or neglect investigation. And nearly any state in the country could take up our Confidential Reporting model , which has already been adopted, notably, in “very Red” Texas and “very Blue” New York. (California also has a version of this protection; the other 47 states are all fair game to take up the measure in 2027!) This model would require a state’s child abuse hotline to collect personally identifiable information like name and address from anyone calling in an allegation of child abuse or neglect. This will greatly reduce the “weaponization” of the System that is rampant across the country. Other available models address Family Rights in Medical Investigations , providing Central Registry Due Process , Reasonable Childhood Independence , and Due Process for Families Facing Potential Separation (i.e. Hidden Foster Care). Every model was drafted with input from friends on both sides of the political aisle and boasts the support of both right-leaning and left-leaning organizations. And each one has been adopted as a model policy by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative group of organizations and Republican state lawmakers who look to shape policy across the country. What to Do, Step-by-Step First, identify your state lawmakers and secure their contact information. In most states, you’ll have one state senator and one representative, delegate, or assemblyman. (In Nebraska, you just have one senator.) Next, see what you can learn about them in a Google search. Maybe one of these models touches on a topic that their voting record shows is already deeply important to them! Set up a time to visit with them. Take one of our models with you as a starting point. (You can take more in case a subject comes up, but start with just one so you don’t overwhelm them!) Ask them their position on parental rights and if they would consider championing our model in the coming session. If they say “no,” that is not the end! Ask them instead if they know another lawmaker passionate about this issue. (We have gotten many great champion connections this way!) Alternatively, ask them if they would be open to a different model, or to revisit this model at a later time. Finally, when you get home, send them an email or a postcard thanking them for their time and attention. Ultimately you want to build a relationship with them, as this will pay off huge dividends down the road. Listen: everyone who enjoys those key relationships with their lawmakers today started off just reaching out for the first time. Who knows? Yours could be the next great parental rights success story. Why not let it begin this August? Thank you for standing with us to protect children by empowering parents through positive legislation in your state , coming in 2027!

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… The post Why We Need “Confidential Reporting” Reform appeared first on Parental Rights Foundation.

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… The post Do Children Have a Right to Family Privacy? appeared first on Parental Rights Foundation.