During Family Month, this column has spotlighted the need that children have for a stable home headed by their biological father and mother. We have talked about putting children’s needs above adult desires in matters of marriage and in artificial reproductive technology.
But even children who have the most stable of loving home environments can be harmed when parental rights are subverted. Parental rights are children’s rights because children have the right not only to food, clothing, and physical safety. They also have the right to the truth.
Education includes reading, writing, and arithmetic, but that’s not all. Education is about the total spiritual formation of a child. It teaches a child who he or she is, how he or she relates to the world, and what are the fundamental truths of the universe. As such, all education is fundamentally religious.
Parents may enlist the help of relatives, friends, and fellow citizens to educate their children, but the ultimate responsibility remains their own. That unalienable responsibility translates into an unalienable right.
Because parents are required to oversee what their children are being taught, they have a resultant right to know what their children are being taught. Educators who respect parental rights are open and transparent about what happens at school. Those that are not subvert the most basic rights of children and have no business in the classroom.
This is why the federal government passed the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in 1974 and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) in 1978.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, FERPA “is a federal law that affords parents the right to have access to their children’s education records [and] the right to seek to have the records amended.”
PPRA is directed at state and local education agencies. It prevents them from gathering information about political or religious beliefs of the student or of parents, sexual behavior and attitudes, or psychological problems - among other things.
Both laws were designed to prohibit the inexcusable behavior of Sweetwater County School District #1 towards Ashley and Sean Willey. Whether or not Judge Scott Skavdahl got the ruling right last April, the Willey’s parental rights were violated and, as a result, the state harmed their child.
Adults who are responsible for protecting children should see to it that no child in Wyoming is ever harmed that way again. That’s why Representative Darin McCann (R-Rock Springs) offered HB 157 Protection of parental rights-cause of action. The House of Representatives passed it overwhelmingly (55-6) and the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved it.
But the Senate leadership refused to bring it to the floor. And senators Anderson, Barlow, Boner, Brennan, Case, Cooper, Crago, Crum, Dockstader, Driskill, Gierau, Landen, Love, Nethercott, Olsen, Pappas, Rothfuss, Schuler, and Scott defeated a motion which would have forced a vote.
Even so, no family should be forced to spend time and money to sue their child’s school. FERPA and PPRA are federal laws that should be enforced by the U.S. Department of Justice.
That’s why it was good news for every Wyomingite when Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, inked an “historic inter-agency agreement” between the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.
“If a school has a policy or practice that blocks you from exercising your rights, we will investigate,” Dhillon said in a June 18, video. “If necessary, we will litigate. If a school continues to violate the law, then that school will not receive federal funds anymore.”
FERPA and PPRA “are simple and clear,” said Dhillon. “A school cannot hide your child’s educational records or curriculum from you, and it cannot force your child to discuss sensitive topics without your consent.”
If there is one thing that the Willey’s treatment taught Wyoming, it is that you cannot protect parental rights too much. Every enforcement tool from the federal DOJ and DOE to the local school board should be protecting a child’s right to be raised by his or her own parents—without being harmed by non-related ideologues who can never love a child as much as his own parents do.
And next year, when veto-proof parental rights legislation comes before the Wyoming Senate, the least it can do is to allow the senators to cast a vote. We owe our children that much.
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.
