Parental Rights

Natural Law

The earliest cases involved the application of state common law to requests by parents to make educational decisions on behalf of their children. The origin of this common law is not clear, but presumably it devolved from the notion that the responsibilities of parents to maintain, protect, and educate their children were undergirded by “principles of natural law and affection laid on [parents] by Nature itself, [and] by [the parents'] own proper act of bringing [children] into the world” (School Board District No. 18, Garvin County v. Thompson, 1909, p. 579).

State courts eventually applied this natural law to parental requests regarding the education of their children pursuant to states' implied authority under the Tenth Amendment to control education. The result in many state cases was a broad protection of parent educational choices for their children, either because the parental choices were assumed to be in the children's best interests or because the choices were not considered to be disruptive to the school setting (State of Nebraska ex rel. Kelly v. Ferguson, 1914; Trustees of School v. People ex rel. Van Allen, 1877; State ex rel. Sheibley v. School District No. 1 of Dixon County, 1891).

However, parents were not always successful in imposing their choices upon schools. In some cases, courts, in rejecting parental choices, relied on the authority of both state legislatures and school boards to set course requirements and on a fear that citizens should not be able to nullify reasonable school board requirements or state legislation (Sewell v. Board of Education of Defiance Union School, Ohio, 1876).

The success of parents in advancing the common-law claims to control the education of their children not only varied among the states but represented an agrarian society, where both the authority of local school boards and parents were significant forces. With the end of World War I, state legislatures became more active in education by enacting compulsory attendance laws. The shift to statewide legislation had a diluting effect on the common-law authority of parents. While parental authority was a prominent force when balanced against the authority of local school boards, it was not as significant when balanced against state-legislated rules.

State Regulation

At the end of World War I, the state legislatures of Nebraska and Oregon enacted statutes that required [Page 612]the teaching of all courses in English (Nebraska) and attendance by all students at public schools (Oregon). The challenge to these two statutes resulted in two important U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary (1925), which created a constitutional right of parents pursuant to the Liberty Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to make educational decisions for their children.

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