Home School Legal Defense Association will soon be facing a new front in the defense of the sincere religious convictions of six Pennsylvania families. Tune in for more on this important issue on today’s Home School Heartbeat with hosts Michael Farris and Mike Smith.
Mike Smith:
Mike, yesterday you talked about how Pennsylvania’s homeschooling law is the strictest in the nation. A case HSLDA is litigating involving six homeschooling families lost in the lower court. What exactly happened?
Mike Farris:
The federal district judge, I think, just got confused and misunderstood what he was supposed to do. He believed that the families had to show that local superintendents were discriminating against them on the basis of religion and trying to stop them from homeschooling. And that’s not the rule at all. The constitutional rule of the Supreme Court that has been in place for years and years and years, as well as the statutory rule that follows those same principles is that wherever government officials have discretion to tell you, “Yes, you can do religious activity or no, you can’t do religious activity,” that discretion is simply unconstitutional. That when government wants to regulate anything relative to religion like building codes, fire codes, etc., the rules have to be objective and neutral—not government discretion. And that’s the problem with the Pennsylvania law, and we hope that the Court of Appeals understands it better than the Federal District Court did.
Smith:
Thank you, Mike, for explaining this important issue to our listeners. And until next time, I’m Mike Smith.
