Emotionally Charged Efforts Target Homeschool Freedoms

We’re seeing a wave of homeschooling restriction bills move across the nation, and I wanted to be sure you know about it, watch for it, and stand against it when necessary.

Since the COVID pandemic of 2020, the popularity of homeschooling has been on the rise. Now, opponents of homeschooling have found a formula to fight back:

Find a horrible child abuse death in the target state, connect the death to homeschooling (whether it applies or not), then exploit the child’s death to drive legislation restricting homeschool freedoms.

It started last winter in Connecticut, where the tragic death of 11-year-old Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres-Garcia was exploited to pass H.B. 5468, a new law that prevents any parent from homeschooling until their school district first checks with the Department of Children and Families. If anyone in the household has an open case or is on the state’s child abuse and neglect registry, such individuals are not allowed to homeschool. But every family, including every innocent family, must wait two weeks or more for the state to carry out its check.

In New York, proponents of Senate Bill 10715 highlight the horrible deaths of four children—Harper, Hudson, Gavin, and Gracelynn Myers—in Mechanicsville, NY, as reason to restrict homeschooling. Like Connecticut’s law, this bill would empower a school district to prohibit a family from removing their child for home instruction until a review can be conducted to see if there is a pending child abuse investigation or either custodial parent has been convicted of certain crimes. Every family is presumed guilty until their name is cleared.

Now it’s on to New Jersey, where the tragic October 13 death of 9-year-old Maya Thomas is being used (already!) to drive mandatory wellness checks for all home-schooled children. The legislation is Senate Bill 741 (S741). “The local legislators say annual home visits would alert authorities to children trapped inside violent homes,” according to a report at the Daily Journal. The checks would be carried out, says the report, “by a counselor, nurse or social worker employed by the school district.”

At first, perhaps some of these actions may seem beneficial. They would allow local school officials to set eyes on every child, to look for any signs that abuse may be occurring.

But two huge principles must first be considered:

First is the timeless maxim, “extreme cases make bad policy.” Using a case of horrendous abuse as justification to target large swaths of the innocent public is always a bad idea. That each of the efforts listed above is being tied to a heart-tugging story of tragic death by abuse should be sounding alarms. Lawmakers are asked to make a quick, emotional decision, though we know such decisions are rarely wise.

Second, in the words of the U.S. Supreme Court, “The statist notion that governmental power should supersede parental authority in all cases because some parents abuse and neglect children is repugnant to American tradition.” Parham v. J.R. 442 US 584 (1979) at 603. Innocent parents have rights, the benefits of which are shared with their households—rights to security in their homes, to a certain level of autonomy, to make educational decisions for their children. Exercising these rights must not in and of itself make them suspect. The fact that evil parents exist does not give the State power to treat all parents as evil.

We believe, rather, that “Natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interests of their children.” (Parham at 602) Efforts to put homeschooling families under the microscope will only exacerbate the real problem, which is that Departments of Child Services aren’t paying enough attention to the potentially abused children already on their radar.

The Connecticut bill mentioned above has already been signed into law. We will alert those of you in New York or New Jersey if either of those bills starts to move, but we invite you right now to contact your state lawmakers and encourage them to resist these efforts.

And if you live elsewhere, we will keep you posted if similar bills crop up in your state.

Thank you for standing with us to protect children by empowering parents—even if those parents choose to homeschool.