In this riveting discussion, Travis and Greg unpack the complexities of parental rights, focusing on two controversial cases involving school policies and children’s gender identity. They highlight the historical context, drawing on past Supreme Court rulings that have upheld parental authority in education. The conversation encourages listeners to become informed and active participants in their local education systems, emphasizing the importance of understanding and exercising parental rights in the face of progressive educational agendas.
This is Travis Pander for Crawford Media Group. Today, I’m joined by Greg Schaller. He’s the director of the Centennial Institute. That’s CCU’s think tank, and they’re dedicated to faith, family, and freedom. We’re talking about a critical parental rights case that’s going to the Supreme Court soon and what that means for American families. Welcome on, Greg. How are you, sir? I’m great. Thank you so much for having me on. Awesome. We’re honored to have you, and it’s a topic that we discuss a lot on our station. So let’s start off, for folks who are unfamiliar with the cases, can you explain the constitutional issues that are at stake in Foote v. Ludlow and Lee v. Puder?
SPEAKER 01 :
Sure, sure. So what this is dealing with, and what’s… very disturbing about this is this should be settled law. It’s dealing mostly with parental rights. There’s other issues involved, you know, concerning religious liberty, you know, how one chooses to raise their kids. But ultimately, this is about parental rights. And as I said, this should be settled law. We can go back to the 1940s, West Virginia v. Board of Ed v. Burnett, which had to do with the compulsion to say the Pledge of Allegiance. And when the family said this violates our religious… beliefs, they were granted protection by the court. We have another case, Wisconsin v. Yoder, which is in the 1970s, which had to do an Amish family and whether or not they could be compelled to have their kids getting an education up to the age of 12, to 12th grade, sorry, when for them it was more important and for their families that they not be required to do that. And the Supreme Court agreed with both of those families. They said, this is a matter of raising the rearing of children and And individual parents have been granted this responsibility. It is on them, and it’s not the state’s. And so the state should not compel parents to act in violation of what their convictions are and how they choose to raise their children. Most recently, of course, we have the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor, which was just decided this past term, where the Supreme Court was looking at uh content curriculum that was being taught to children and there was a ukrainian orthodox family a catholic family and a muslim family who thought the content that was being taught to their kids was in violation of their personal beliefs their religious beliefs and so they asked for to be informed about what the content is and to have the option of having their kids opt out of that instruction time. And the stuff that was most controversial, of course, was things to do with sexuality, with gender, with transgenderism, and the like. And so these families found that offensive. The Supreme Court agreed six to three that the school had to inform them and that they had the option of opting their kids out of that instruction that they disagreed with. So we have many precedents of parental rights that the responsibility of parenting kids goes to parents, not to some other institution, of course, unless there’s some extraordinary case where there’s abuse or some other violations where parents might, because of their behavior, cede that responsibility to somebody else. But those are very rare circumstances. Ultimately, we think about this, and ultimately, common sense tells us this precedes anything that happens in the courts. This is just how God created his order. Parents have the responsibility of raising their kids. So all of that background gets us to these two cases, Foote v. Lutlow and Poudre School District. In both of these instances, there were parents who had children in these schools and very different circumstances. But one was dealing with depression and other issues. Another was basically just a tomboy, sort of going through natural phases that many children do. And in both of these instances, school administrators or teachers, and in one case just a substitute teacher, school counselors begin getting involved. And they begin encouraging these two young children to consider transitioning and to say that, you know what, you may be biologically female, but you maybe are probably a male. and you should start identifying as a male. And then when you get deeper, dig deeper into this, it’s just extraordinary. So the Poudre School District actually had a policy. Some of it was written, some of it was basically de facto policy, where if they were dealing with a child that was in the process of transitioning and that they may be encouraging to transition, they were intentionally deceiving the parents. So in the Poudre They would simply act like there’s nothing going on. They would identify this female as a female. They would never say anything. But when they were dealing with the child on the school campus, they would refer to her as a male. That’s incredible. Obviously, and they encourage their counselors to insist this was a written policy. They would encourage the counselor to work with the students to come out to transition and then ultimately to make this announcement to their parents. In the other case, the foot, the Ludlow School District in Massachusetts. The parents knew that their daughter was dealing with issues. She was dealing with depression. She was dealing with suicidal tendencies. She was dealing with gender dysphoria, and they were taking active steps. They had hired a private counselor. They were working with their daughter through these issues, and they asked the school district to do nothing, and the school district violated those intentions. The school counselor encourage the daughter to go through with transition, begin transitioning. So a clear violation of the parent’s intent. In both of these cases, they have lost at lower court levels, at district courts and at the circuit courts of appeals. So something you said at the beginning, we don’t actually have a grant of writ de certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court right now. We have filed, we signed on a brief that were written by the Advancing American Freedom, the think tank in Washington, D.C. And we are encouraging the U.S. Supreme Court to take these cases up because we think it’s hugely important. When we see schools, administrators, counselors, teachers acting in clear violation of parental intent, we have a very serious problem. In my mind, the Supreme Court has spoken on this issue already. But clearly, there needs to be greater clarity on the part of the courts to ensure that schools stop behaving in this manner.
SPEAKER 02 :
And why do you think that they do that? So, I mean, it seems obstinate, like just completely contrary to settled law. What do you think is emboldening these groups, these schools and administrators to continue doing this when, I mean, the Supreme Court has already knocked down a couple that I can recall just from the news, correct? So what gives them length? Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
I think it’s hubris. It’s just absolute arrogance that these teachers, administrators, counselors have convinced themselves that they have better know the interests of these young children. And that’s that’s extraordinary to me legally. You know, I don’t know if. I forget which case it was. It was one of these summer cases where Justice Gorsuch wrote an opinion where he shot down a federal district court judge who was clearly acting in violation of the Supreme Court case. And in his opinion, he said, you don’t have to agree with it, but you have to comply with it because that’s the nature of the ordering of our federal court system. And so I think that we’re seeing here is exactly that. It’s happening on local levels where you have school administrators who are in defiance of clear precedent, and it’s because they think that they know better. I think there’s also an agenda concerning human sexuality. and a rejection of a biblical worldview, a rejection of God’s created order, that God created two genders, male and female, and what you are assigned is what you are by birth given because of what you are biologically. And there’s people who reject that biblical worldview, who say, no, we know better than God’s created order.
SPEAKER 02 :
Amen to that. Absolutely. So what, and this will be of more interest to our listeners, I think, what do you think the individuals, the churches, the communities, the universities, those of us who don’t live in the legal world at the Supreme Court and things like that, what can we do individually to help to right the wrongs that we’re seeing?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, well, I think, you know, it’s a matter of information, being knowledgeable, well-informed, and also knowing what rights we have. Again, because these cases are not going away, and I’ve spoken with people in many different states about this. I live in a state, Colorado, that is in many ways very lost. very far left, very progressive. So it’s not surprising to me that this is happening. This other case arising out of the state of Massachusetts, also a very progressive state. But people should keep in mind that the state of Colorado wasn’t always this way. Go back to our politics 25, 30 years ago, Colorado was a solidly red state, a very conservative state. So it didn’t take long for Colorado to flip completely, basically a 180. So there’s one thing I tell people. I was on a radio program in Alabama, and they were quite shocked by what was happening in Colorado. And I said, keep your eye out because this movement will try and infiltrate your state as well. So you have to be careful. But the court is clear. Know what your parental rights are. So if your kids are in a public school, be well aware. You can go to the school and demand to know what is the curriculum? What are you teaching my kids? And now based upon the Mahmoud case of last term, the court has made clear that you can opt your kids out if you don’t like the content, if it’s in violation of your principles, of your religious beliefs. So for instances like this, It’s just being well-informed, knowing what your rights are, and being engaged. We, as conservatives, talk about the importance of local government, and we say we believe in this, but how many of us actually go to local township meetings, local city councils, go to our school board meetings? We need to be much more engaged in finding out what exactly are these people doing so that we can be well-informed, good citizens. And then we can hold those accountable who are doing things that we think are very problematic.
SPEAKER 02 :
Absolutely. You heard it, guys. Get informed. Go to your school. Go to the board meetings and council meetings and get informed. And get involved. Greg, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Our listeners are going to agree you’re the right man to carry this flame, and we appreciate everything you’re doing. Hopefully, we can get Colorado back to some common sense in the short term. So I appreciate you, sir. Thanks for coming on with us today. Thank you so much. We’ll talk to you later.
