(2023-08-29) The Christian Homeschooler Who Made Parental Rights A Gop Rallying Cry

The Christian home-schooler who made ‘parental rights’ (parents' rights) a GOP rallying cry. Michael Farris made the same points he had made in courtrooms since the 1980s. Public schools were indoctrinating children with a secular worldview that amounted to a godless religion, he said. The solution: lawsuits alleging that schools’ teachings about gender identity and race are unconstitutional, leading to a Supreme Court decision that would mandate the right of parents to claim billions of tax dollars for private education or home schooling.

previously undisclosed July 2021 call

In recent years, he has reached the pinnacle of the conservative legal establishment. From 2017 to 2022, he was the president and chief executive of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a powerhouse Christian legal group that helped draft and defend the restrictive Mississippi abortion law that led to the overturning of Roe vs. Wade

Yet it is outside the courtroom that Farris’s influence has arguably been most profound

When former president Donald Trump called for a federal parental bill of rights in a 2023 campaign video, saying secular public school instruction had become a “new religion,” he was invoking arguments Farris first made 40 years ago. The executive order targeting school mask mandates that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) signed on his first day in office cited a 2013 state law guaranteeing “fundamental” parental rights that Farris helped write.

Farris has not been personally involved in pushing the most recent bills, which have been fueled by anger over covid-19 mask mandates and how schools are handling Black history, sexual orientation and gender identity

Farris, a graduate of Gonzaga University School of Law, hit upon the idea of a “home-school union” of families to share court costs. In the spring of 1983 — a few months before Farris moved his family to Northern Virginia so he could work for the conservative Concerned Women for America — he co-founded the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).

Though it frequently worked on behalf of Christians, the association also represented Black Muslims, and atheists

Over the next decade, Farris and the HSLDA were at the forefront of courtroom and political battles that eventually led not only to the legalization of home schooling in every state but also to notably lax oversight for home educators in much of the country.

his most famous confrontation with public school officials came during a 1986 trial in Tennessee. His clients were born-again Christians who argued their children should not be required to read “Rumpelstiltskin,” “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and other material that they said undermined their religious beliefs

In a 1987 speech, he called public schools “very, very dangerous” and “per se unconstitutional” because of the worldview they conveyed to students

“Inculcation of values is inherently a religious act,” he said. “What the public schools are doing is indoctrinating your children in religion, no matter what.

On an October morning in 1995, Farris, then 44, sat before a House Judiciary subcommittee and urged legislators to pass the Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act.

The law could shield abusive parents and wreak havoc in schools, children’s welfare advocates testified. Then-Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) predicted a barrage of lawsuits against schools from religious parents over subjects and materials they found offensive. Melvin Watt, an African American congressman from North Carolina, worried about the bill’s implications for the perspectives of racial and religious minorities.

For several years, he receded from politics, founding Patrick Henry College — the country’s first catering specifically to home-schoolers — in 2000.

Then, in 2007, Farris and other home-schooling leaders created a new parental rights group.

It was in state capitols — not the halls of Congress — that the organizations were destined to find success.

In 2013, Farris wrote a Virginia bill closely modeled on his proposed constitutional amendment

After some revisions, the bill passed the Republican-controlled state legislature.

The new law was “kind of a sleeper,” Pogge recalled in a recent interview. That changed dramatically eight years later, when an up-and-coming Republican gubernatorial candidate began to invoke parents’ rights on the campaign trail.

But some doubt that Farris and his political allies truly believe that the rights of all parents are worth protecting. Farris said he doesn’t believe that parents should have the right to help children transition to a different gender. “Parents who engage in a behavior that causes long-term harm to their children — that crosses the barrier of what parental rights protects,” he said.

The best way to accommodate different ideas about how schools should handle such issues is to give parents as much choice as possible in how their kids are educated, Farris said, through universal school voucher programs

In May 2021, Farris attended a gathering of conservative activists at which former attorney general William Barr denounced public schools’ “indoctrination with a secular belief system” that is “antithetical to the beliefs and values of traditional, God-centered religion.”

Farris was approached after the speech by Peter Bohlinger, a Southern California real estate magnate who helps lead Ziklag, a group devoted to expanding Christian influence over American culture and government.

Farris had recently set up a Center for Parental Rights at ADF. Bohlinger laid out the plan on the donor call: ADF lawyers would file lawsuits they hoped would lead to a Supreme Court ruling that declared a constitutional right to vouchers for private and home schools

“Our goal is to take down the education system as we know it today,” Bohlinger said in one of the videos reviewed by The Post.

“Mr. Farris has worked on parental rights issues for many years and accomplished much in this area,” the group said. “ADF does not share all his views and is not pursuing all his theories.”