Fields v. Palmdale School District

i don't write much about law here, because the more that i learn in law school, the more i realize that i don't know. there's so much out there, and we're doing such a sweeping overview that it's unfair to say that i know more than a little bit of the language and am beginning to understand the process of reasoning that the law requires.

that said, i've been very interested by the 9th Circuit's recent decision in Fields v. Palmdale School District that says that a parent does not have a constitutional right to control sex education in public schools. the reasons i'm interested in this are many: i have found that i absolutely love constitutional law... more than any other class, i enjoy learning it, reading it & thinking about it; i'm also in the middle of a big research paper for a writing class on non-parental visitation & custody, and how the recent decision of Troxel v. Granville in 2000 has affected the constitutionality of these things, so this topic is at the forefront of my mind; finally, one of the most interesting topics of constitutional law for me was the privacy interests that have somewhere been extended from the right to be left alone in your own home and the rights that are now among the "penumbra of privacy" interests supposedly protected by the 4th amendment... very interesting stuff.

so when i heard about the decision, i had to go & look it up. and when i did, i was struck again by how differently a legal mind thinks than a normal person's mind. being so new to the legal community, i'm still using both sides of my brain - and hopefully i'll be able to continue throughout life. but this is how it's different:

when you read about sex education, you think, yeah - parents should have a right to make decisions about what their kids encounter at school. different kids require different sensitivities, different levels of knowledge, etc. and it's my understanding that many states have laws about this, or maybe school districts have policies that will allow the parents to opt children out of sexual education classes. this is a good thing. and if you look at other cases in courts, you do see that sexuality is supposed to be something that's part of protected privacy... right? seems logical. and you realize that if the school district stops asking parents, the parents who care are going to take their kids out of the schools - send them to charter schools or private schools, etc, where parental involvement is much more recognized. so on a lot of levels the parental outrage makes sense, & you want the parents to win. you want the decision to be that parents have a right to at the very least be informed of the kind of education their kids are receiving.

and then you look at the case. the action was brought not under state law, but a federal civil rights action. and to be honest, i've never even read the statute that gives rise to that cause of action. but in actuality, the case was decided on the basis of the pure privacy interest debate - the privacy rights of parents having to do with the sexuality of their children. and i've got to say, i think the court made the right legal decision. because i really do think that we're already beyond the scope of the privacy rights granted in the constitution, with our decisions about bodily autonomy, etc. it's not that i think we shouldn't have those rights... i'm just not sure that they come from the constitution. if the court had decided that parents have this fundamental right... had said it was a fundamental liberty interest... it seems like that would have been an extension of a principle. and i for one, am not sure that that principle should be extended any further than it is.

and truly, the court had a good point, as far as social policy. do we really want to grant every single parent in a public school district the right to dictate what is taught & how it's taught? probably not... how would a school function then? it's already hard enough for the schools to get kids educated.

but there might be some other answers. like the parents could have petitioned on a local level for an information requirement about all sexual education classes/activities. they could have petitioned their state to institute state laws that gave them that kind of protection. they could have insisted on it, formed a grassroots effort, and taken their kids out of the schools.

but they didn't - they chose to sue and effectively to try to extend the privacy rights of parents. so that's interesting to me. because you know that the "conservative" base is usually the group that would be uncomfortable with sex education. and yet these same people are arguing that the constitution should be interpreted to the letter, and nothing more. so i have to wonder... what were the parents thinking? did they understand legally what they were trying to do? or were they operating from the regular person mindset that sees a problem & wants to fix it, but not realizing what effect the decision would have if they won?

interesting questions. and just so you know, i'm not sure exactly where i stand in the constitutional law realm yet. i'm still trying to discern where i would come down on so many issues. these are just kind of my initial gut-reactions... my disclaimer is that i'm just a law student spouting off... i'm not well enough informed to actually know yet.