Last week, while I was buried alive in a huge volunteer project
in addition to my normal, ridiculously overbooked life of work,
family, and class, I started getting emails about a recent
California court decision that supposedly makes homeschooling
illegal.
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Last week, while I was buried alive in a huge volunteer project in addition to my normal, ridiculously overbooked life of work, family, and class, I started getting emails about a recent California court decision that supposedly makes homeschooling illegal. 
Fortunately, the first email I received was an elert from my lawyers, the Home School Legal Defense Association. After that, I was able to forward HSLDA’s remarks to all the frantic homeschoolers, the upset homeschoolers-to-be, and the interested innocent bystanders. 
The appeals case was brought by two court appointed lawyers who had represented the family’s minor children in a dependency case. The original case was about charges of abuse based on the parents’ decision to spank their children. That case had been resolved, but the lawyers were not happy because the court had upheld the family’s right to homeschool. So the lawyers appealed. On Feb. 28, the 2nd Appellate Court of Los Angeles made a sweeping decision. Roy Hanson, chief of the Private and Home Educators of California, commented, “Normally in a dependency court action, they simply make a ruling that will affect that family. It accomplishes the same thing, meaning they would force (the family) to place their minor children into school,” he said. Such rulings on a variety of issues always are “done in the best interests of the child” and are not unusual, he said. But in this case, the court went much further, essentially concluding that the only way a family can homeschool is if the parent holds a teacher’s credential. 
There are troubling aspects to the case. Justice H. Walt Croskey refused to hear evidence from the accredited private homeschooling program where the children were enrolled. 
Rather than making a narrow ruling affecting only the Long children, the ruling affects all 166,000 homeschooled students in the state. Worse, the ruling ignores the fundamental right of parents to direct the education of their children. Worst of all, the decision reverses the assumption of innocent until proven guilty and the long-held assumption in American jurisprudence that parents have the best interests of their children at heart. 
Selfishly, I am not particularly worried.
Our youngest is 17 and attending Gavilan full time; she has held the legal equivalent of a high school diploma for five years, and has been accepted to Cal Poly SLO for the fall. Less selfishly, HSLDA, the Pacific Justice Institute, and several other homeschool groups are seeking legal recourse. Nota bene: the parents in the case, Phillip and Mary Long, were not members of HSLDA.  They were represented by court-appointed lawyers.
Since it was by law a confidential proceeding, neither HSLDA nor any other legal advocacy organization knew that the right of all homeschoolers in California was depending upon the outcome of this family’s case. Now the family is appealing this decision to the California Supreme Court with their California counsel. HSLDA will file an amicus brief on behalf of 13,500 member families in California, arguing that a proper interpretation of California statutes makes it clear that parents may legally teach their own children under the private-school exemption.
However, if the court disagrees with the statutory argument, HSLDA will argue that the California statutes as interpreted by the Court of Appeal violate the constitutional rights of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children.Secondly, HSLDA will seek to have this case depublished by the California Supreme Court.
If the Court determines that the decision should stand, regarding this family, on the facts presented, but that the general pronouncements of law for all of homeschooling should not be determined by this case, then the Court has the option of “depublishing” the Court of Appeal’s decision.
This would mean that the case is not binding precedent in California and has no effect on any other family.
Thirdly, California is facing a $14 billion deficit. If this were enforced, how would we educate an additional 166,000 students next year?
No wonder Arnold Schwarzneggar and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell say, “The California Department of Education policy will not change in any way as a result of this ruling. Parents still have the right to homeschool in this state.”  
