9th Circuit: Parents Have No 'Fundamental Rights' in Their Children's Sex Ed
by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
November 3, 2005
(AgapePress) - - A Christian constitutional attorney says Wednesday's ruling in a case dealing with a survey administered to elementary-age children essentially undermines parental rights in determining when, where, and how children are exposed to sexual topics in public schools. The case involves the Palmdale School District in California, which notified parents of its intentions to conduct an assessment of children ages seven to ten in order to "establish a community baseline measure of children's exposure to early trauma (for example, violence)." What the letter to parents did not convey was that ten of the 79 questions on the survey would ask the children about the frequency of "touching my private parts," "thinking about having sex," "having sex feelings in my body," and "can't stop thinking about sex."
Six parents sued the school district after they discovered the contents of the survey, alleging the district had interfered with their constitutional rights by authorizing the survey be administered without disclosing to parents the sexual nature of portions of the survey. Yesterday, a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco unanimously sided with the school district.
Judge Steven Reinhardt, writing for the panel, stated: "We hold there is no free-standing fundamental right of parents 'to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs ....'" Continuing, he wrote: "We conclude only that the parents are possess [sic] of no constitutional right to prevent the public schools from providing information on [sex education] to their students in any forum or manner they select."
Attorney Alerts Parents
Brian Fahling is the senior trial attorney with the Center for Law & Policy, the legal arm of the American Family Association. He says while he is not surprised at the ruling from the Ninth Circuit -- historically the most overturned federal appeals court in the country -- he does find the decision "extremely disturbing."
"I think this opinion holds that when parents send their children to public schools, they essentially have forfeited any right to control any aspect of the education of that child as it pertains, for instance, here to sex education," Fahling says. "This court opinion locates in the hands of schools the right to whatever they want to do with respect to sex education, whenever they want to do it -- and that really is deeply troubling."
Equally troubling to the attorney is the fact that the panel of judges failed to address the deception of the school in conducting the survey. He contends that "many public schools operate in a similar fashion." That is one reason he strongly recommends parents be intimately involved in what their children's education.
"I'm not certain that that many [schools] would be as deceptive as this particular school was, but it really shows how parents have to be vigilant in knowing what the public schools are doing," Fahling says.
The attorney speaks from experience. "This is not an indictment of all public schools; however, we see enough here [in cases from] across the country to suggest that any parent who's not heavily involved in their child's academic life in a public school is being neglectful, in my estimation."
Fahling says he expects the decision to be appealed to the full Ninth Circuit -- and then, he says, it could head to the Supreme Court.
