PA: Couples Challenge Home Schooling Regulations

All states have some regulation for homeschooled children, but Pennsylvania's is perhaps the most stringent: affidavits at the beginning of each school year, medical records, a log of progress, and a report at the end of the year. Some religious parents say this creates an "undue burden" and they should be allowed to ignore it all.

The Kansas City Star reports:

"God is in our math, God is in our science, God is in our history. Yet we have to submit to a government agent for approval," Maryalice Newborn said. ... Darren Jones, staff attorney for the Purcellville, Va.-based Home School Legal Defense Association, who is involved both cases, said Pennsylvania's Religious Freedom act is the perfect vehicle for the lawsuits. He said parents who choose to home school their children tend to be religious and have many children, making reporting requirements more cumbersome. "We have no problem with some sort of registration, although we don't think it's necessary," Jones said. "But the fact is these are parents who are trying to do what's best for their kids."

Marci Hamilton, a church-state scholar at Cardozo Law School at New York City's Yeshiva University, said it will be hard to prove that home schooling regulations create a substantial burden. "These regulations are not made for religious home-schoolers. They are just regulations where states are concerned about whether the child is being cared for and educated," Hamilton said. "It's really not about (the Religious Freedoms Protection Act.) It's about how best you care for children," she said.

The regulations don’t create a religious burden, they create an administrative burden. What this means is that there is no imposition on anyone’s religion — people aren’t prevented or inhibited in worship or belief. Instead, they have to spend time filling out forms, just like everyone else. This is admitted by the parents who say that they would be willing to submit the paperwork to a Christian school.

Thus, they don’t even really mind filling out the paperwork — they just don’t want to fill it out for the state. Everyone else has to do it, though, and because they don’t have any religious objections to the regulations, they won’t win their lawsuit. Just because they are religious doesn’t mean that they can ignore laws everyone else has to follow.

Read More:

• Separation of Church and State 101
• Church and State News
• Secularism 101