Parental Rights Celebrating Milestones
This week, we are celebrating a couple of milestones in the area of parental rights.
First, the EPPiC Broadcast is celebrating the launch of its sixth podcast season with an episode featuring Ethan Demme of Demme Learning (and a member of the Parental Rights Foundation board). Ethan discusses his family’s contact with the foster care system from the other side: they fostered and adopted children last year and saw first-hand that, even from the adoptive family’s viewpoint, the system needs reform.
We are also excited for next week’s episode, which will feature Suzanne Nossel. Suzanne is the CEO of PEN America and a former State Department official whose article opposing our parental rights position appeared in Time magazine last fall. She agreed to sit down with our own Will Estrada to discuss and debate their contrasting positions on the proper role of parents in the life of a child.
That episode will launch on Tuesday, February 28, in the afternoon.
Second, there is a much bigger milestone to celebrate this week: February 23 marks the centennial—the 100th anniversary—of the oral arguments before the US Supreme Court in Meyer v. Nebraska, the first parental rights case in the Court’s history.
In recognition of this significant anniversary of an even more significant event, Parental Rights Foundation president Will Estrada wrote an article that is featured this week in the Washington Examiner.
In Meyer, the Court held the following (emphasis added):
While this court has not attempted to define with exactness the liberty thus guaranteed [by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause], the term has received much consideration and some of the included things have been definitely stated. Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
In Pierce v. Society of Sisters two years later, the Court would flesh this out more succinctly: “Under the doctrine of Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, we think it entirely plain that the Act of 1922 unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control…” (emphasis added).
In short, the formal recognition of fundamental parental rights by the US Supreme Court started from those oral arguments presented 100 years ago today!
In light of those rights, we continue our efforts to formalize and preserve them through state law, federal law, and the Parental Rights Amendment, all of which we owe to supporters and followers just like you.
So, thank you for standing with us! As we recognize parental rights this week, let’s commemorate these milestones by listening to the podcast, reading Will’s story at the Examiner, and standing ready for state alert emails to promote parental rights legislation where you live!