Some of the most familiar words in the Bible are about the Christmas shepherds - “they went with haste and found Mary, and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger” (Luke 1:16).
The shepherds put not only the Christ Child, but the whole family at the center of their attention - child, mother and stepfather.
As if to punctuate this, a first-of-its-kind court ruling came out on the Monday before Christmas. U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez issued a summary judgment against the California law AB 1955 that unconstitutionally inserted state schools between children and parents.
Benitez ruled that the California law violates the Due Process rights of parents as well as the First Amendment rights of both parents and teachers.
“Due Process” means that before any parental rights can be denied in any specific case, the parents are entitled to defend themselves in the judicial system. No teacher, principal, or school board can simply assume that parents who disagree with them are criminally negligent and deserve to have their children taken away.
The flawed California law makes the outrageous, if unspoken, assumption that an educator has the right to override or undermine the upbringing that parents are giving outside of school hours.
Teachers are hired to supplement the education that parents provide, not to supplant it. Now, a federal judge has ruled that supplanting parental rights violates Due Process, Free Exercise of Religion and Free Speech rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Additionally, Benitez ruled that parental rights not only allow them to investigate, and possibly discover, what the school is doing to their children, but parents also have a positive right to be told.
As access to school campuses has become increasingly restricted, school officials have incurred a positive responsibility to reach out to parents and to tell them what is happening in the classroom.
In this connection, Benitez addressed the free speech rights of countless teachers who know the importance of taking the initiative to talk to parents. The California law muzzled these excellent educators and put their jobs at risk for doing what they know is right. Federal jurisprudence now protects those teachers under the First Amendment.
If these rights sound vaguely familiar, you might be remembering a similar situation that happened in Sweetwater County. Ashley Willey was both a teacher in Sweetwater County School District No. 1 and the mother of a student in the district. Her husband, Sean, was the stepfather of that student.
In the spring of 2022, the Willeys accidentally learned that school officials were secretly calling their daughter by a different name. Later, as a teacher, Ashley Willey was ordered to keep similar secrets from the parents of her own students.
The Willeys sued SCSD1 in 2023 on grounds nearly identical to the recent lawsuit in California.
Listen to them tell their own story in a documentary, recently released by Honor Wyoming.
Sadly, the Willeys case was thrown out last April, and is now on appeal before the 10th Circuit.
Wyoming Federal District Judge Scott Skavdahl denied Ashley’s free speech claim as a teacher. He also ruled that the stepfather, Sean, had no standing to sue. Then, he ruled that the School District “did not withhold or knowingly misrepresent any information… and thus did not interfere with this [parental] right.”
By contrast, Benitez, the California judge, stepped in to prevent any state school employee from lying to parents, blocking access to their child’s educational records, or using different names for children at school than their parents use at home.
Additionally, Benitez’s order forbids the school board from interfering with a teacher’s ability to speak openly with the parents of his or her student.
Benitez’s ruling requires that training materials for California teachers prominently print the following three sentences:
· “Parents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence.
· Teachers and school staff have a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian of their student when the student expresses gender incongruence.
· These federal constitutional rights are superior to any state or local laws, state or local regulations, or state or local policies to the contrary.”
This is an excellent summary of every parent’s rights. Not only is it fitting for California’s teacher-training material, it should be widely disseminated to every Wyoming educator. In fact, every legislator who will take up the issue of parental rights ought to have it printed on a card and taped to his or her desk.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com.
