WASHINGTON (ABP) — In what has become something of a regular ritual, conservative groups are expressing outrage at a ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — this one involving parents' rights and sex education.
Socially conservative groups and some members of Congress issued statements Nov. 3 and 4 lambasting the California-based appellate court's Nov. 2 ruling in Fields v. Palmdale.
In it, the court dismissed a lawsuit by six parents who had sued the Palmdale, Calif., school district, near Los Angeles. The parents sued the district for unspecified damages for submitting their elementary-aged children to a survey that included some questions about sex.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt, penning the ruling for a unanimous three-judge panel, upheld a lower federal court's determination that “there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children” and 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.”
The survey, which the district discontinued in 2002 after parents' complaints, was given to students in the first, third and fifth grades. The survey was given by the district to gather information “regarding psychological barriers to learning,” according to court papers.
The parents signed consent forms allowing their children to be surveyed. However, the forms did not inform the parents that the survey would contain information of a sexual nature.
Some of the questions the children were asked included inquiries about how frequently they were “thinking about having sex” and “thinking about touching other peoples' private parts.”
A group of conservative congressmen denounced the ruling in a Nov. 4 press conference on Capitol Hill.
“Courts have now ruled that while first graders cannot be forced to pray or say 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance, they can be forced to answer deeper personal questions which are developmentally inappropriate without informed parental consent or knowledge,” said Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), who is also a child psychologist. “The 9th Circuit has undermined the long-standing precedent that the right to raise and educate one's children is a fundamental right.”
Murphy referred to the same court's 2002 ruling that initially declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because of its religious language. That decision — also handed down by a three-judge panel that included Reinhardt — caused an outcry, and was eventually reversed by the Supreme Court.
Conservative Christian organizations similarly bashed the latest decision. The Washington-based Family Research Council called it “one more horrible example of what happens to parents' rights when liberal judicial activists are unchecked.”
But Judge Reinhardt said the parents' suit was misguided because it was based on the right to privacy, which many conservatives say does not exist in the constitution and has been used incorrectly by “activist judges” to establish abortion rights. Reinhardt said “no such specific right can be found in the deep roots of the nation's history and tradition or implied in the concept of ordered liberty.”
He cited other cases in which federal courts have upheld school districts' rights to have mandatory health or sex-education classes.