Saturday, November 12, 2005

School Allowed to Give Sex Survey to Students, Despite Parents' Protest

Another reason for giving parents a choice of schools

The recent ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Fields vs. Palmdale School District is cause for great alarm. A group of parents brought a lawsuit against the school district for involving their children in a sex-survey conducted in their school without the parents' permission. The parents' basic complaint was that the school violated the students' right to privacy and the parents' right to control the education of their children, particularly regarding sexual matters.

The Central District Court of California ruled against the parents. The parents appealed to the 9th Circuit Court which on November 2nd agreed with and upheld the lower court's ruling. Quoting from the opinion from the appeals court:

"We agree, and hold that there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children, either independent of their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it. We also hold that parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students. Finally, we hold that the defendants' (officials and school district) actions were rationally related to a legitimate state purpose."

This case disturbingly illustrates the radical departure of federal judges (and I must say, the entire legal system) from the foundational principle of the Constitution: that it is an instrument of the people to restrict the powers of government.

The court's conclusion could only be reached by using the Bizzaro Superman comic-book logic, where everything is in reverse, good is evil and evil is good. Instead of the Constitution being an instrument of the people to allow certain specified powers to the government, these bizzaro judges believe that the Constitution is an instrument of the government that gives rights to the people. This kind of bizzaro thinking violates the very essence of the Constitution! Only by using bizzaro logic can they conclude that, because there is no provision in the US Constitution that gives parents the right to control the sex education of their children, then the parents don't have that right.

This is what results from the mind-set of the activist-court. These arrogant liberal judges are out-of-control. If America is to avoid further erosion of the Constitution and the anarchy that will follow, these judges must be stopped and replaced. Furthermore, America needs to repair the damage caused to its Constitution by the bizarros with the gavels and black robes

Source

Another comment on the same ruling (Excerpt):

All parties agreed that no court had previously found a specific right to "exclusive control over the introduction and flow of sexual information to their children." Judge Reinhardt writes that "no such specific right can be found in the deep roots of the nation's history or tradition..." He means that he can find no political-legal right of this sort appearing in the documents that found our nation. Therefore, he looks for this right as an accompaniment of other broader rights that either are stated or have been construed by past jurists as having been stated.

Quite clearly, the judge is working solely in a framework of constitutional and statutory law. He is not seeking justice in the sense of natural rights. He is not out to find what is naturally right. His job is to determine what is legal either because a constitution says it is legal, or legislative laws say it is legal, or what other judges have previously determined to be legal.

If Judge Reinhardt were dealing in natural, not political, law, he could never say that the right to determine the sex education of children was not to be found in American history or tradition. He would be laughed out of natural law court. It is common knowledge that from time immemorial parents have heavily determined their children's education in sex and other matters, and have a natural right to do so. It is also obvious that the appellants are a small sample of a significant set of Americans who have objected to sex education in the schools on various grounds, such as religious, personal, and political, for a long time. If these facts aren't part of American history and tradition, then what is? The only way the judge's comment makes any sense is that he is not taking into consideration the age-old natural parent-child relationship.

In natural law, this relationship is straightforward. Children begin life with some rights and acquire more as they grow older. They do not have full adult rights as children. The parents have the right to bring up and educate their children, which they acquired by producing the children. This is not to say that there will not be tensions arising as children mature and acquire more rights.

At this juncture, I naively muse about why the lawyers for the plaintiff and why the judges did not make any reference to the numerous documents in our country's history that reflect natural law and rights. The Declaration of Independence is a prime example. It plainly states that governments are instituted among men to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I may not personally believe this, but if I were a lawyer I would argue on this basis. Educating one's children according to one's preferences is surely conducive to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It surely is natural to the life of those in a family.

And if I were Judge Reinhardt or one of the other two judges, I could, if I had a mind to, conclude that our history and tradition does provide a good deal of evidence of broad natural rights that imply that a parent has a right to determine what a school teaches. Why didn't both sides use this legal logic? Maybe they have not thought of it, but that's quite implausible. Maybe it won't hold up in court, but that's implausible too. Otherwise, why did the judge mention the documents that found our nation? I am puzzled. I hope that some bright lawyer reads these words and can build a different case the next time.

Under both political and natural law, the appellants have a potential weakness in their case. In sending their children to the school, they may have suspended their rights over the children. However, I argue that this is not the case because coercion is present in several respects. Parents must educate their children by law. Parents (and non-parents) must pay school taxes. Furthermore, parents find it very costly to move for the sake of changing school district. It is also very costly to remove the children and educate them at home or in a private school. Therefore many parents make a highly constrained choice to send their children to public school. They are not voluntarily suspending their rights. It is more accurate to say that they have lost their rights over their children.

A court might say that parents can assert their control over the school through the school board. In reality, the school board is a political body and, as such, is an unwieldy, blunt, and costly instrument for exercising control.....

Kristi Seymour administered all the surveys. She was a Master's Student in psychology at the time who volunteered as a "mental health counselor" in the district. She developed the questionnaire in association with the Children's Bureau of Southern California and the School of Professional Psychology in which she was enrolled. The Children's Bureau is a 100-year old private/public institution. It is private in form but receives over half of its funding from the state. One of its focal points is child abuse and neglect. The goal of the research was "to establish a community baseline measure of children's exposure to early trauma (for example, violence.)"

Seymour mailed a letter to parents that explained the study and provided a consent form. This letter, after mentioning the trauma and violence objective, explains: "We will identify internal behaviors such as anxiety and depression and external behaviors such as aggression and verbal abuse." This comprises the material about the substance of the questions. Nowhere at all is even a hint, not a trace, given of questions about sex or sexuality. However, the actual questionnaire had 10 (out of 79) questions specifically about sex.

My own naive legal thinking is that this deception should be the basis for a tort based upon the breaking of a contract. However, the lawyers of the plaintiffs did not go in this direction.

The appellants argued that the survey was not a legitimate state activity because it was not part of the curriculum, again referring to past cases. They also argued that the survey was done to advance Seymour's career. Reinhardt dismissed the latter as "entirely speculative and conclusory in nature." He referred to the "detailed information setting forth the legitimate governmental purpose of the survey" and that the survey would be used for the benefit of the School District. Although this issue did not make or break the case, the judge seemed to me to lean over backwards to side with Seymour. He does not admonish her either for her failure to inform parents fully in advance, indeed to mislead them, about the survey, even if only by oversight; and he does not even admit that she did stand to gain personally by her work.

The former claim he axed, noting that the state's interest goes far beyond curriculum. From Brown vs. Board of Education, he extracted a veritable paean to public education whose glorious language I will spare you from.

The only even slight concession to the appellants occurs here: "Although the students who were questioned may or may not have `learned' anything from the survey itself and may or may not have been `taught' anything by the questions they were asked, the facilitation of their ability to absorb the education the school provides is without question a legitimate educational objective." Judge Reinhardt at this point seems anxious to close off any legal loophole that might be used in the future. He makes a far-fetched assertion. He asserts (with no basis) that the survey makes easier the education of the students being asked the questions. Try as I might, I can't see how this occurs.

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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