Another Judicial Blow to Parental Rights
Richard L. Cravatts Ph.D.
December 14, 2006
In a curious Supreme Court decision last week, one that upheld the habitual practice of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to adapt Constitutional readings to its narrowly focused liberalism, outraged parents in California's Palmdale School District were told again that they have "no fundamental right" to solely share information about sex to their children, "in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs." The public schools, the Circuit Court had originally found in 2005, were free to provide its own education on sexual matters to children, with or without the consent and participation of parents. The high court has now upheld that decision, and apparently was unimpressed with the parents’ claim to be the only ones to “control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex."
While Justice Stephen Reinhardt, speaking for the Ninth Circuit Court, disingenuously conceded at the time of his decision that “parents have a right to inform their children when and as they wish on the subject of sex,” he summarily divested them of parental rights when he made this astounding statement: parents, he decided, “have no constitutional right . . . to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise, when and as the school determines that it is appropriate to do so.”
The contested matter here was a survey, ostensibly designed to find incidences of ‘trauma’ in the lives of elementary school students, administered by Kristi Seymour, a mental health counselor finishing a master’s degree program at the California School of Professional Psychology. Despite the fact that neither the school district nor, apparently, Ms. Seymour had any notion of what the purpose, use, or value of the survey was, the Court found that the age-inappropriate, sexualized interviews had intrinsic value, “that a psychological survey is a reasonable state action pursuant to legitimate educational as well as health and welfare interests of the state.”
What health and welfare interests of the state could be achieved by asking seven year-olds questions such as, ‘Touching my private parts too much,” “Not trusting people because they might want sex,” “Having sex feelings in my body,” or “Can't stop thinking about sex,” actual components of this ‘psychological’ survey?
How could these salacious interviews be purported to fulfill some ‘legitimate interest of the state’ in furthering the educational needs of the schools? It was created randomly by an outside consultant with no mission greater than satisfying the requirements of graduate study. Neither she, nor apparently the School Committee, knew what the content, purpose, and findings would reveal. The true nature of the explicit survey was obscure, and its actual tone and substance was purposely hidden from parents prior to its administration. The survey’s stated purpose, to identify and to attempt to ameliorate events of ‘trauma’ in student’s lives by asking them titillating questions about sexual experiences, made the mistake of being more traumatic on its face than the likely findings such a survey would itself reveal.
The spurious nature of the survey notwithstanding, the Ninth District Court found that parents have no essential right to determine how and when information about sexuality is given to their own children. “We hold,” said the decision, “that there is no free-standing fundamental right of parents ‘to control the upbringing of their children of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs’ and that the asserted right is not encompassed by any other fundamental right.”
In Palmdale, evidently, parents and their children have no fundamental right to privacy; and, according to Judge Reinhardt, there is no articulated basic right to guide the most private emotional growth of their children. This view, however, seems to contradict a concept very clearly affirmed in the 1972 Wisconsin v. Yoder decision in which the Court, pointing to the liberty clause of the 14th Amendment, described parental rights as fundamental, finding that the “primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established as an enduring American tradition.”
More important to the case at hand, there is not only no compelling state interest in the administration of the survey, there is arbitrary use and specious purpose to it, both of which attributes would condemn it through “strict scrutiny,” since in this instance California has seemingly diminished rights falling in the "privacy" cluster of marriage, child-bearing, and child-rearing,
Even in Meyer v. State of Nebraska, a case ironically cited and contorted by Judge Reinhardt in his own decision, the Court found that parents’ rights were more important than the good intentions of the state, “that this liberty may not be interfered with, under the guise of protecting the public interest, by legislative action which is arbitrary or without reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of the state to effect.”
When schools deliver actual learning, and even education about knowledge which could ordinarily be construed as incidental to traditional teaching, they have a legitimate and important purpose. They may even be called upon to go beyond their expected reach in helping with broad public health concerns, where clear and profound dangers would exist absent their involvement.
But the state cannot have it both ways: both compelling parents to enroll their children in its public schools and then denying parental input and diminishing parental authority, even with the most noble of intentions. “A state’s interest in universal education,” the Court found in the Wisconsin v. Yoder case, “however highly we rank it, is not totally free from a balancing process when it impinges on fundamental rights and interests, such as those specifically protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, and the traditional interest of parents with respect to the religious upbringing of their children.”
The Ninth Circuit Court may have its own agenda for implementing social change, but none of these players should not expect that they can capriciously interpret the Constitution when it conforms to their own ideology and ignore it when its troublesome details prove an impediment to shaping social policy, either from the bench or from school committee offices.
While Justice Stephen Reinhardt, speaking for the Ninth Circuit Court, disingenuously conceded at the time of his decision that “parents have a right to inform their children when and as they wish on the subject of sex,” he summarily divested them of parental rights when he made this astounding statement: parents, he decided, “have no constitutional right . . . to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise, when and as the school determines that it is appropriate to do so.”
The contested matter here was a survey, ostensibly designed to find incidences of ‘trauma’ in the lives of elementary school students, administered by Kristi Seymour, a mental health counselor finishing a master’s degree program at the California School of Professional Psychology. Despite the fact that neither the school district nor, apparently, Ms. Seymour had any notion of what the purpose, use, or value of the survey was, the Court found that the age-inappropriate, sexualized interviews had intrinsic value, “that a psychological survey is a reasonable state action pursuant to legitimate educational as well as health and welfare interests of the state.”
What health and welfare interests of the state could be achieved by asking seven year-olds questions such as, ‘Touching my private parts too much,” “Not trusting people because they might want sex,” “Having sex feelings in my body,” or “Can't stop thinking about sex,” actual components of this ‘psychological’ survey?
How could these salacious interviews be purported to fulfill some ‘legitimate interest of the state’ in furthering the educational needs of the schools? It was created randomly by an outside consultant with no mission greater than satisfying the requirements of graduate study. Neither she, nor apparently the School Committee, knew what the content, purpose, and findings would reveal. The true nature of the explicit survey was obscure, and its actual tone and substance was purposely hidden from parents prior to its administration. The survey’s stated purpose, to identify and to attempt to ameliorate events of ‘trauma’ in student’s lives by asking them titillating questions about sexual experiences, made the mistake of being more traumatic on its face than the likely findings such a survey would itself reveal.
The spurious nature of the survey notwithstanding, the Ninth District Court found that parents have no essential right to determine how and when information about sexuality is given to their own children. “We hold,” said the decision, “that there is no free-standing fundamental right of parents ‘to control the upbringing of their children of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs’ and that the asserted right is not encompassed by any other fundamental right.”
In Palmdale, evidently, parents and their children have no fundamental right to privacy; and, according to Judge Reinhardt, there is no articulated basic right to guide the most private emotional growth of their children. This view, however, seems to contradict a concept very clearly affirmed in the 1972 Wisconsin v. Yoder decision in which the Court, pointing to the liberty clause of the 14th Amendment, described parental rights as fundamental, finding that the “primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established as an enduring American tradition.”
More important to the case at hand, there is not only no compelling state interest in the administration of the survey, there is arbitrary use and specious purpose to it, both of which attributes would condemn it through “strict scrutiny,” since in this instance California has seemingly diminished rights falling in the "privacy" cluster of marriage, child-bearing, and child-rearing,
Even in Meyer v. State of Nebraska, a case ironically cited and contorted by Judge Reinhardt in his own decision, the Court found that parents’ rights were more important than the good intentions of the state, “that this liberty may not be interfered with, under the guise of protecting the public interest, by legislative action which is arbitrary or without reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of the state to effect.”
When schools deliver actual learning, and even education about knowledge which could ordinarily be construed as incidental to traditional teaching, they have a legitimate and important purpose. They may even be called upon to go beyond their expected reach in helping with broad public health concerns, where clear and profound dangers would exist absent their involvement.
But the state cannot have it both ways: both compelling parents to enroll their children in its public schools and then denying parental input and diminishing parental authority, even with the most noble of intentions. “A state’s interest in universal education,” the Court found in the Wisconsin v. Yoder case, “however highly we rank it, is not totally free from a balancing process when it impinges on fundamental rights and interests, such as those specifically protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, and the traditional interest of parents with respect to the religious upbringing of their children.”
The Ninth Circuit Court may have its own agenda for implementing social change, but none of these players should not expect that they can capriciously interpret the Constitution when it conforms to their own ideology and ignore it when its troublesome details prove an impediment to shaping social policy, either from the bench or from school committee offices.