When the California Court of Appeal ruled on February 28 that homeschooling was illegal, advocates of homeschooling sprang into action. Two of those advocates explain the appeal for a rehearing of the Rachel L. case on today’s Home School Heartbeat with HSLDA President Mike Smith.
Mike Smith:
Today, HSLDA Senior Counsel Jim Mason joins me. Jim, explain to our listeners what happened after the original ruling was published.
Jim Mason:
Mike, when we first read the opinion that outlawed home education in California, we knew immediately that it was fatally flawed. It relied on an old truancy case from 1953 and failed to take into account several key statutes that had been passed by the Legislature since then.
In California, homeschoolers are technically small private schools, so the statutes never refer to “homeschooling” by that name. Over the years, the Legislature passed laws aimed at traditional private schools, but it included exceptions to account for small, parent-operated private schools in the home. If you didn’t practice law in the area of home education, you might not find those exceptions.
That’s what happened in this case. The parents’ court-appointed appellate attorneys never brought the critical statutes to the court’s attention.
When a court makes such a critical error, rules allow a party to ask the court to reconsider its own opinion. It has to be filed less than two weeks after the opinion comes out, and it has to show a critical error occurred, not just disagreement with the outcome. Petitions for rehearing are often filed but rarely granted.
We at HSLDA knew where to find all of these hidden homeschooling statutes, and we immediately began working on the petition for rehearing. But we didn’t represent the parents. The Lord orchestrated events so the petition that we wrote could be filed, which began the road to victory for California homeschoolers.
Mike:
Jim, thanks for your work on this motion for rehearing. And until next time, I’m Mike Smith.
