Homeschooling Gestapo Strikes Again

What do homeschooling and drunk driving have in common? A lot, according to a German judge who made the comparison when he sentenced parents to three months in jail for educating their children at home. Juergen and Rosemarie Dudek, both Christians, are one of the estimated 400 couples in Germany who secretly homeschool their kids despite an antiquated ban on the practice instituted by Adolf Hitler 70 years ago. The decision, which smacks of Nazi-era oppression, will be appealed to a higher court, where the ruling will likely stand. German courts have repeatedly upheld homeschooling as a form of “child abuse,” a conclusion echoing that of a California court last February when a three-judge panel struck down the rights of homeschooling parents in that state. While the California ruling was later vacated, both have something in common–the desire to use public education as a vehicle for indoctrinating children in the liberal views of the state.

Philly Rocks the Cradle of Liberty

Eight days shy of the eviction deadline imposed by the city of Philadelphia, the Cradle of Liberty Boy Scout Council is striking back. On Friday, Scout officials filed suit in federal court to end a longstanding struggle with the city over a building that the council built and has occupied since 1928 for $1 a year. In a public war over the Scouts’ membership policy which bars homosexuals from joining, Philadelphia’s leaders have threatened to pull the rug out from under the Cradle’s headquarters.

City officials say their demands are entirely justifiable under a 26-year-old city ordinance that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. As Philly’s mayor sees it, the Scouts have three choices. They can vacate the premises by May 31, open their doors to gay members and staff, or pay $200,000 in annual rent.

Cradle of Liberty elected the fourth option–suing for their right to privately assemble on public property as other organizations have done without reproach. The city’s demands would be somewhat understandable in a politically correct environment had it not welcomed other religious and civic groups to use Philly facilities at minimal charge. The Scouts will argue–and rightly so–that have been unfairly targeted for eviction.

Considering that the Cradle of Liberty spent $1.5 million renovating the space in the mid-’90s and pays about $60,000 a year in upkeep, it would be in the city’s best interest to maintain the tenancy. Philadelphia has also benefited from 80 years of the Scouts’ influence on young boys in a city where gangs and violence rates soar. It’s incredibly ironic that the city is begging for million of state dollars to combat urban problems, while at the same time trying to force out one of the greatest crime deterrents in all of Philadelphia–a character-building youth program that serves 70,000 boys.

The focus may rest squarely on the City of Brotherly Love now, but the case has national implications for religious freedom. If the city is successful in bringing the Scouts to their knees, other towns will be emboldened to do the same. But if the Cradle of Liberty prevails, fewer people will be willing to challenge the Scouts’ rights to adhere to a traditional moral code.

Senate Democrats Continue to Obstruct Appointments to the Federal Judiciary

The clock is ticking on the deal that Democrats and Republicans have struck over the President’s judicial nominees, which calls for three appeals courts nominees to be approved by Memorial Day.

For the past 16 months Senate Democrats have been on a course of approving a record-low number of nominees in the final two years of a President’s term. Now they appear to have maneuvered the White House into agreeing to a compromise where two of the three nominees in the deal would, in fact, be the Democrats’ own picks. One of them, Helene White, is Sen. Carl Levin’s (D-Mich.) “cousin-in-law,” whose nomination to the bench was blocked by Republicans more than a decade ago. Determined to move her forward, Levin blocked four nominees for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals until the President agreed to nominate White.

Now Sen. Levin wishes to count White toward the three-judge target by Memorial Day. Because the Sixth Circuit would still have a small Republican-nominated majority even with the addition of White and another nominee President Bush actually wants, Levin can posture, as he did to the New York Times yesterday, that it would “not be appropriate” to take the political balance of the Sixth Circuit into consideration. GOP senators on the Judiciary Committee respond that the Memorial Day compromise lets the obstructing Senate majority approve two Democratic choices and leave a long list of Presidential nominees waiting in a limbo that has lingered for years.

The whole process is a spectacle unworthy of the Senate. Judicial choices will always matter, but that they matter so much is a result of the fact that judges now routinely legislate from the bench. Our founders did not want a partisan judiciary. We have one, and it’s high time our timorous politicians emerge from behind the black robes of policy-making judges and reclaim their legislative authority, even if that means having to vote on tough issues they would rather kick over to the unelected branch.

An article by Newt Gingrich
March 25, 2008 

Parents “do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children.”

So wrote a California judge in a case that has ominous potential for the estimated one million-plus American families who have opted out of the public education monopoly and choose to educate their children at home.

Although the ruling is being appealed to the California Supreme Court, as it now stands, the 166,000 California children who are home schooled are truant, and their parents are criminals. Welcome, as the Wall Street Journal editorialized, to a “strange new chapter” in the “annals of judicial imperialism.”

No Teaching Credentials? No Home Schooling.

For background, you should know that although California’s compulsory education law requires that all children between the ages of six and 18 attend a full-time day school, the state law also contains provisions for parents to legally teach their children at home. Under these provisions, homeschooling by unlicensed moms and dads has flourished in California, as it has across the nation.

But all this began to change when the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services recently investigated a claim of abuse by a homeschooled child. Lawyers representing the child invoked the California compulsory education statute to send the child to a public school and a judge eventually agreed, ruling that homeschooling by an unlicensed parent teacher is illegal. Thus, writes the Journal, “a single case of parental abuse is being used to promote the registration of all parents who crack a book for their kids.”

The long and short of it: A California court has ruled that if you haven’t spent four years attending a teaching college and getting the proper licenses from the state, you can’t homeschool your children.

Another Case of a Special Interest Using the Courts to Do What It Can’t at the Voting Booth

The merits of homeschooling speak for themselves. Homeschooled children dominate academic competitions and get superior scores on standardized tests. They excel at all the things compulsory education laws are meant to promote, such as school attendance, academics and civic education.

But the California homeschooling decision is important in another respect — even those of us who don’t homeschool our kids should be outraged and concerned.

The decision represents yet another case of a special interest — in this case, the education unions and bureaucracy — using the courts to get what they can’t get through the popular vote.

This is yet another example of judicial supremacy: Rule by an out-of-control judiciary rather than the will of the people. It joins court rulings such as the removal of “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance on a long list of usurpations of the freedom and self-determination of the American people.

What You Can Do About It

The good news is that citizen activism can be a powerful tool in fighting judicial supremacy.

A good example is the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), a group fighting for the rights of homeschooling parents in California and states across the nation.

They initiated a petition drive in the wake of the California decision that attracted a quarter of a million signatures in 10 days. The effort was so successful that they’ve stopped gathering signatures. But you can still learn more and help their cause by going to HSLDA.org.

And don’t stop there. Homeschool regulations are overwhelmingly developed at the state-government level. Call or write your state representatives and let them know that this is one case of judicial supremacy that will not stand.

Parental Authority No Match for Court’s
from Family Research Council

Last week, a federal appeals court refused to uphold the parental and religious rights of two Massachusetts couples–David and Tonia Parker and Rob and Robin Wirthlin–whose young children were exposed to books that promoted homosexual “marriage” in their elementary school. I met and interviewed the Parkers and the Wirthlins for FRC’s Liberty Sunday broadcast from Boston in October 2006 (and our “Critical Mass” DVD includes their stories). It’s amazing how cavalierly the court’s decision dismisses the evidence that school officials engaged in the deliberate indoctrination of children. The school sought to coerce its students into accepting values that are way outside the mainstream and in direct contradiction to those of their parents. Yet the same courts that are trying to reinvent the family are encouraging the public schools to act as their surrogate. A lawyer for the parents has vowed to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. They could also sue in state court, given the blatant violation of a state law which mandates that parents be notified before any discussion of “human sexuality issues.” Of course, since it was Massachusetts’ Supreme Court that legalized same-sex “marriage,” you can imagine what the families’ chances of winning would be! The federal court recommended the parents “seek recourse” through the legislative process. But that is small comfort considering that when pro-family forces do succeed, as they did in Boyd County, Kentucky, judicial activists simply rewrite the democratic decisions to suit their political agenda. When family values clash with homosexual activism in the public schools, rulings like this one prove that parents’ rights continue to be wronged.

Additional Resources
FRC “Critical Mass” DVD
FRC pamphlet “Homosexuality in Your Child’s School”