Read the opening paragraph of Fields, et al. v. Palmdale School District, a case handed down on November 2nd by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The majority opinion – including the words below – are from the pen of Judge Stephen Reinhardt.
When parents of schoolchildren in Palmdale, California learned from their sons and daughters that they had been questioned in their public elementary school about sexual topics such as the frequency of "thinking about having sex" and "thinking about touching other peoples’ private parts," some of them exercised their constitutional right to take their grievance to the courts. The questioning was part of a survey the Palmdale School District was conducting regarding psychological barriers to learning. The parents brought an action in district court against the School District and two of its officials for violating their right to privacy and their right "to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex." They brought both federal and state claims. The district court dismissed the federal causes of action for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted and dismissed the state claims without prejudice to their right to re-file in state 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’ actions were rationally related to a legitimate state purpose.
Read again the final three sentences of this quotation.
The state – government – politicians and their henchmen and toadies – strangers specializing in duping the masses into believing that these same duplicitous strangers are capable of superhuman feats of beneficence – are ruled by a U.S. court of appeals to have a "legitimate" reason to interfere with parents’ decisions about how to expose children to "sexual matters."
As my good friend Roger Meiners remarks about this ruling by super-lefty Judge Reinhardt, it’s rather anomalous that lefties so publicly bemoan the likelihood that non-lefty judges threaten personal freedoms. Is this ruling not deeply offensive to all who love liberty?
