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June 1, 2025
A Century Has Passed Since The Supreme Court Clearly Declared Kids Are 'Not Creatures Of The State' - Civil Rights Today Is About Recapturing Parental Rights
100 years ago today, the United States Supreme Court unanimously decided the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, a landmark blow in favor of parental rights. The Court’s bold words deserve to be recalled today:
“The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations” (268 US 535).
Pierce arose because, amidst post-World War I anti-Catholic activism, Oregon adopted by referendum a law that required all children in the state to attend public schools only. A parent who enrolled his child in a Catholic school would commit a misdemeanor by failing to comply with Oregon’s compulsory school attendance law.
An order of nuns operating a parochial school brought suit, and the Supreme Court struck down Oregon’s rule, insisting the state had no right to homogenize education because parents have the right to determine how their child is brought up.
That last statement has been recognized for eons as a self-evident truth. British and American common law treated it as a basic legal principle. In that sense, Pierce simply reaffirmed our legal tradition.
Let’s not fail to see how far some people want to deviate from it.
The Supreme Court will decide this month the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor. The case comes from Montgomery County, a large school district that borders Washington, D.C. Montgomery County adopted a sex education curriculum including components for preschoolers through fifth grade. That curriculum treats the gender ideology agenda as completely normal and to be taught to children who still probably have not been exposed to addition. To top it off, despite Maryland law to the contrary, Montgomery County refused to allow parents to opt out of the curriculum. Outraged parents sued and the case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in April.
Can one imagine the Pierce Court -- a unanimous Court -- having concluded that parents could decide their child need not attend a public school but if he does go, parents have no say about exposing him to “drag queens” and “leather boys?”
Pierce affirms a basic principle that, until not that long ago, was uncontroverted in American law and is fundamental both to natural law and Catholic social thought: parents are the primary educators of a child. Nobody is ordinarily more invested in or loves that child more. Nobody knows that child better. Nobody has more direct or immediate rights and responsibilities vis-à-vis that child. Because parents have a responsibility to educate a child, the community supports their primary task through schools. But that role is supportive and subsidiarity: it cannot be one where the “support” undermines the right of a parent to raise and educate their child.
The parent-child relationship precedes the state. There were parents and children before there were governments. That means that, except in clearly derelict or egregious circumstances, the government cannot usurp parental rights. Well, Montgomery County is trying.
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It’s why we also need to watch language. Talk -- especially educational talk -- about “partnerships” with parents is misleading if the “partners” are thought to be on equal footing. A child is not somebody to whom various “partners” make pitches for his attention or approval. A “child” is a child because, by definition, he stands in a unique and unrepeatable relationship to a parent that he has to no one and nothing else. And a child, as a minor, is the responsibility of a parent, not an “adult-in-miniature” to whom interested parties sell their agendas in “the marketplace of ideas.” That, too, is a consequence of the loss of the idea of childhood innocence and vulnerability.
We see this abridgement of parental rights growing. Schools that push “sex education” curricula contrary to the values of parents are one example: the idea that sex is purely biology with “values perspectives” freely attached is already an ideological commitment, not a fact. The effort to shield parents from even being aware of how a child is identified in school -- by name, pronoun, and/or sex -- is another egregious example. The idea that the state has some “right” to push its ideology (often masquerading under the term “values”) on children in the face of parental objections is another. That’s not “education.” It’s indoctrination.
100 years after Pierce, we are seeing the renaissance of a vibrant parents’ rights movement. More and more parents are also saying Pierce needs to be carried forward: it should not be just a question of being able to opt out of the public school but being able to choose whatever educational environment a parent determines is the best one in which a given child will thrive. After all, education dollars are for educating, and the subject of education is a child, not a school. We teach kids, not schools. Schools are just venues where education happens. So, why are public schools given a monopoly on educational money?
Most people don’t follow carefully what goes on in schools, especially if they don’t have children in schools. COVID and “on-line learning” pulled back the curtain to expose what is going on in schools, and lots of parents did not like what they saw. The proliferation of educational choice programs is the response. The growth of the “educational choice” movement is closely related to parental rights.
The Heritage Foundation in Washington has just launched a “Parent’s Rights Initiative” as a one-point clearinghouse for information in this area. You might want to bookmark it.
A century has passed since the Supreme Court clearly declared kids are “not creatures of the state.” Neither are parents “domestic terrorists” for protecting their rights or for standing up to school boards intent on abridging those rights. Today’s civil rights movement is about recapturing rights that don’t depend on the state to exist.
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