Parental Rights News

Last year’s Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor won’t do families any good if schools continue to ignore it for want of official guidance from the federal government. That’s essentially the message we sent in a letter to the U.S. Department of Education last week. In June of 2025, the Supreme Court issued a favorable ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor , a case over whether parents have a right to opt their children out of materials in the public schools that the parents find objectionable for religious reasons. The litigants, including Jewish, Muslim, and Catholic families, argued that the Baltimore County School System violated their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children by undermining the parents’ religious instruction to their children. The Court sided with the parents. But a full year later, reports are coming in from around the country of school systems continuing the practice, pushing content on even their youngest students without concern or respect for parents’ objections. In a few places, like California, the pressure to ignore family autonomy and ride roughshod over parents’ rights comes from the state. But in most instances, these decisions are being made at the local level. And I am gratified to see parents battling at the local level to bring their own local school boards into line with constitutional parental rights. But the federal government has a key role to play in situations like this, too. A lot of education dollars come through the federal government, and those funds come with strings attached; only those states who play by the federal rules get the federal dollars. (The Parental Rights Foundation does not hold a position on whether this should be how the system works; we merely observe that this is how the system works.) And that means that states and localities alike need to be mindful of any official guidance that comes down from the Department of Education. Ignoring such guidance can result in a loss of federal funding. This is why the absence so far of federal guidance on the application of Mahmoud is so disappointing, especially from an Administration seeking to be favorable to families and to parental rights. What’s more, federal dollars should not be used to support education sources that are actively and intentionally violating fundamental, constitutionally protected rights, such as the rights of parents recognized in the Mahmoud case. “In some places, the response to the Mahmoud decision has been disappointing, at best,” says Parental Rights Foundation board chairman and constitutional law professor emeritus William Wagner. “Clear guidance from the federal government can help put these school districts back on the proper legal footing, one that respects the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children.” In short, as schools and administrators seek clarity regarding parental rights and constitutional protections, we urged the Department of Education to issue guidance that those educational professionals can rely on to properly apply the principles set forth in Mahmoud . Parental rights are fundamental, Supreme Court recognized rights that deserve protection and respect. If such guidance is issued, as we hope it will be, we will let you know and celebrate the win together. Thank you for standing with us to protect children by empowering parents.

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.

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.