TEXAS
Birth Certificate Bill Gets Through
House Bill 1516, the birth certificate bill, has given Texas homeschoolers headaches all through the 1997 legislative season. This bill requires schools to have parents produce birth certificates when they enroll their children for the first time in a primary school for students under 11 years of age. Originally, this birth certificate requirement had been part of House Bill 316, which would have required home school parents to register their children's birth certificates with the Texas Education Agency. HSLDA opposes such tracking measures, whether or not they affect homeschoolers, but it quickly became apparent that the larger private schools were not willing to fight to defeat this bill.
Home School Legal Defense Association attorney Scott Somerville conferred with Texas home school leaders and legislative aides to find some way to make sure that homeschoolers would not be harmed if this legislation could not be stopped. It became urgent that we find a way to distinguish homeschoolers from the large private schools without creating a new category of homeschools in Texas law.
The final language of the bill makes it clear that birth certificates are only required for schools which charge a fee for tuition and have more than 25 students enrolled and attending courses at a single location.
Although we would have preferred to kill the bill altogether, there is a silver lining. The new language gives Texas homeschoolers a unique defense against federal education regulations. The federal courts in Texas and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals have struck down federal laws which regulated activities within states based on an overbroad understanding of the Interstate Commerce powers of the U.S. Congress. The power our Founding Fathers gave Congress to regulate commerce between the states has mushroomed into the vast array of federal regulation of virtually all businesses. By distinguishing between schools that charge a fee for tuition and those that do not, however, Texas homeschoolers are poised to claim a new defense against federal education regulations. Our homeschools are not interstate, and they are not commerce. Expect to see some ingenious new challenges to federal regulations in Texas in the near future!
