PA Tackles Reinstatement of Parental Rights

Every year in the United States, more than 50,000 children lose their rights and access to their own parents through a process myopically called “termination of parental rights,” or TPR. A proposed bill in Pennsylvania, House Bill 133, looks to address this problem in a modest way: by providing a process by which TPR can be reversed in certain situations.

Not all circumstances lend themselves to this kind of reversal. 

First, after the passage of time, the parent must show that the underlying problems that led to the TPR order have been addressed. Parents who lost their children due to addiction, for instance, might need to show that they have successfully completed treatment and remained sober for some period of time. 

Second, the child must still be in need of a permanent home. Children who have been successfully adopted will not suddenly be uprooted from their new home and sent back to their parents. But children still languishing in the foster care system can be sent home with the court’s approval.

Right now in Pennsylvania, a child can bounce from placement to placement and ultimately age out alone, even when there is a fit and loving parent just waiting to bring them home. The courts there have no path, no legal authorization, to return that child to a parent after TPR.

Pennsylvania is not the first state to tackle reinstatement of parental rights. California passed the first such law in 2005 and ten states had passed similar statutes by 2010. Today, twenty-six states have some kind of parental reinstatement law on the books: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Pennsylvania HB 133 was introduced by Rep. Rick Krajewski (D-Philadelphia) in September of last year. The bill has fifteen cosponsors, including one Republican, Rep. Sheryl Delozier of Cumberland County.

In legislative parlance, that 14-to-1 ratio makes this a “partisan bill,” Delozier’s support notwithstanding. But it shouldn’t be. Parental rights are a vital interest to all Americans, regardless of party, and restoring those rights whenever possible should be important to those on both sides of the aisle.

Fortunately, support for the bill was bipartisan when it counted: the bill passed the 202-member Pennsylvania House of Representatives in June by a vote of 191 to 11. Every Democrat and 89 of 100 Republicans voted in favor.

Now the bill is in the Senate, where it was referred to the Judiciary Committee on June 25.

Frankly, I’d love to see TPR abolished entirely. Terminating parental rights should at least be used as a last resort, when the compelling governmental interest in a child’s safety cannot be met by any other, less restrictive means. (If parental rights are fundamental rights—and they are—then shouldn’t the termination of those rights require the ‘strict scrutiny’ standard accorded to other fundamental rights?) 

This is a conversation change that will take some time to bring about. Legal scholars Michael Farris and Vivek Sankaran contributed to it with their own discussion in season nine of our EPPiC Broadcast podcast. Now Krajewski’s bill provides another opportunity to move that conversation forward.

If you live in Pennsylvania and your state senator is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, please take a moment to reach out and encourage them to take up HB 133 in committee and vote in favor. Urge them to recognize that the rights it would restore are important to all families, Republican and Democrat alike. 

If you don’t live in Pennsylvania, look for your state on the list above. If it’s not there, perhaps the effort could be taken up in your legislature in the coming session. Why not ask your state lawmaker to look at HB 133 and consider bringing the same law here? 

Working together, we can shift the conversation, and we can start to bring the children home—in every state.

Thank you for standing with us to protect children by empowering parents through reinstatement laws like the one being discussed in Pennsylvania this year.