On Thursday, Governor Abbott released his plan for a “Parent’s Bill of Rights.” Since that announcement, grassroots activists and policy experts have mused about precisely what some of those proposals will look like in practice and exactly how serious Abbott is about those proposals.
Governor Abbott’s statements on the topic were bold, but experts in the arena question whether the final policies will match the grandeur of his rhetoric.
As the Deputy Director of the foremost parental rights advocacy organization in Texas and someone who has personally and repeatedly raised prominent parental rights policy issues face-to-face before the Governor’s senior policy staff, I remain skeptical.
Every significant parental rights reform to pass the legislature since 2017 has done so without the support of Governor Abbott.
Every parental rights legislative reform that has died has done so without his comment.
Now, just ahead of the 2022 primary election, Governor Abbott has adopted bold rhetoric defending parental rights.
His very first proposal is for legislation solidifying the constitutional right of parents to make decisions for their children and ensuring that those decisions cannot be overridden without due process of law. This is the very same proposal I have personally pitched to Abbott’s team face-to-face during every legislative session since 2017.
It is a proposal that would have prevented immense legal abuses of innocent families over the last five years, including a high-profile case that required the intervention of the Texas Supreme Court.
In 2017, I personally sat down with the Governor’s team to lay out a series of essential policy reforms necessary to protect parental rights in Texas. These included an extensive list of CPS reforms as well as various changes to ensure the general right of parents to make decisions for their children was protected.
This last change would have ended the barbaric practice in Texas of allowing private parties, even including non-relatives, to take children from biological parents without even an accusation of abuse or neglect.
This proposal was ignored by the Governor and his team in 2017, 2019, and 2021. Yet, as of Thursday, it has managed to take first place on Governor Abbott’s list of parental rights reforms.
During each of these three legislative sessions, I was given an audience by Governor Abbott’s policy team, told to “keep them informed,” and was sent on my way. Each time, Governor Abbott refused to take any position on the bills.
Without participation from Governor Abbott, in 2017 and 2021, we worked with a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to pass extensive CPS reforms.
Every other parental rights reform failed to pass and died without comment from Governor Abbott, including the one now topping his priority list.
Governor Abbott remained silent on these legislative proposals even when, during the 2017 legislative session, a report from CPS revealed that, in up to 75% of their cases, parents were being accused of crimes that nobody, including CPS, believed they had committed.
Instead of weighing in to support an urgently needed legislative fix, Governor Abbott appointed a workgroup to study the issue over the next two years and draft a proposed solution–a solution which he then refused to address when it was presented by the workgroup during the 2019 legislative session.
In the summer of 2019, the parental rights discussion blanketed Texas airwaves and social media when CPS removed 4-year-old Drake Pardo from his family without any evidence of wrongdoing. After a six-month battle all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, CPS quietly dropped the case and returned the child home. Many of the issues raised in the case were issues we had drafted and presented legislative solutions for in the 2017 and 2019 legislative sessions, proposals for which we had fruitlessly requested Governor Abbott’s help.
During our battle to defend the Pardo family, my team and I personally delivered more than 40,000 petition signatures to Governor Abbott asking him to intervene. Despite intervention from numerous lawmakers and the Texas Attorney General, we got no response from Governor Abbott.
In 2020, another high-profile parental rights case reached the Texas Supreme Court. Again, the case had grown directly out of problems in the Texas family code which we had drafted legislation to solve and which we had presented to Governor Abbott’s team to address in both 2017 and 2019.
In that case, a father had his daughter taken away and sent to live with an unrelated man she barely knew. The father was never accused of abuse or neglect of any kind. Again, we intervened, launching a statewide campaign to defend the family and filing a brief with the Texas Supreme Court. In what may be the most significant parental rights case in Texas history, the court ruled unanimously for the daughter to be returned home.
Following these two cases, I again sat down face-to-face with Governor Abbott’s senior policy team to discuss the array of parental rights issues needing reform. I presented our legislative solutions and I asked specifically what their plan was to solve these problems.
In response, I was told that they could not share Governor Abbott’s opinions on those topics, they asked me to keep them informed, and they sent me on my way.
In the 2021 legislative session, we again brought to the table extensive CPS reforms, most of them reforms which had been raised and pitched to Governor Abbott’s previously, but to no avail. We also brought back legislation defining the right of parents to make decisions for their children. This is a right which, according to our research, 45% of appellate court opinions since the year 2000 found to have been misapplied by lower courts.
Nearly every CPS reform presented during the 2021 legislative session passed with near-unanimous support from the Texas Legislature. Yet, not only did Governor Abbott never express any support for these bills, when the flagship CPS reform bill reached his desk after the 2021 legislative session, he let it go into law without his signature or comment.
Every other parental rights reform presented during the 2021 legislative session, including the one now at the top of Governor Abbott’s list of priorities, died without his intervention.
Governor Abbott’s Thursday announcement also spoke boldly in favor of parental rights in education. For more than 20 years, including every legislative session since Governor Abbott originally took office, THSC has pushed legislation to allow homeschool families access to the public school UIL extracurricular activities that their tax dollars pay for–a policy nearly 40 other states currently allow.
Every session since Governor Abbott took office we requested his support for this key legislation favoring parental rights in education. Every legislation session we got no response.
In 2021, the homeschool community fought tooth and nail and finally got the UIL Equal Access bill passed with overwhelming bi-partisan support.
It was only after this 20 year battle, a herculean, bi-partisan effort in the legislature, and the complete delivery of the legislation all of the way through the political labyrinth directly to Governor Abbott’s desk that he finally expressed an opinion by signing the bill.
In other words, it was only after the political battle was essentially over that Governor Abbott was willing to express his support.
For the last five years, Governor Abbott’s rhetoric on parental rights has been weak, and his policy initiatives have been AWOL. Now, suddenly, his rhetoric is bold.
Given our past experience attempting to garner Governor Abbott’s support on parental rights issues, we were surprised to see his Thursday announcement boldly speaking in favor of a parent’s bill of rights.
Having said that, we welcome to the battle any politician who joins the fight sincerely intending to defend Texas families. In that sense, Governor Abbott’s new rhetoric on parental rights is an encouragement. If he sincerely intends to make the defense of parental rights a cornerstone of his policy initiatives, he will find no greater ally in that battle than THSC and homeschool families.
However, as always, these promises should be measured by results, not rhetoric.
We will see if his parental rights policy initiatives will finally be able to remove themselves from the corner, dust themselves off, and get something done… or whether that rhetoric was only intended to last as long as it had political utility.
If the first, we will be there alongside him to lead in that effort, loudly declaring his dedication to Texas families. If the second, we will be entirely candid in our assessment of that failure.
Will this new rhetoric lead to actual policy results? Time will tell.
-Jeremy Newman, THSC Deputy Director
Do you want to stay informed about parental rights? THSC believes that parents should be empowered to raise and educate the next generation of leaders. As a THSC member, we support your family to do just that! Join THSC today and sign up for our newsletters to stay up-to-date.
Jeremy Newman, THSC Deputy Director
Jeremy has served as the Policy Director for THSC since 2013. In 2022, he became THSC’s first Deputy Director. He teaches Lincoln-Douglas debate in the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association (NCFCA). He currently lives in Fort Worth with his wife, Addi, and two sons, Wyatt and Declan.
On Thursday, Governor Abbott released his plan for a “Parent’s Bill of Rights.” Since that announcement, grassroots activists and policy experts have mused about precisely what some of those proposals will look like in practice and exactly how serious Abbott is about those proposals.
Governor Abbott’s statements on the topic were bold, but experts in the arena question whether the final policies will match the grandeur of his rhetoric.
As the Deputy Director of the foremost parental rights advocacy organization in Texas and someone who has personally and repeatedly raised prominent parental rights policy issues face-to-face before the Governor’s senior policy staff, I remain skeptical.
Every significant parental rights reform to pass the legislature since 2017 has done so without the support of Governor Abbott.
Every parental rights legislative reform that has died has done so without his comment.
Now, just ahead of the 2022 primary election, Governor Abbott has adopted bold rhetoric defending parental rights.
His very first proposal is for legislation solidifying the constitutional right of parents to make decisions for their children and ensuring that those decisions cannot be overridden without due process of law. This is the very same proposal I have personally pitched to Abbott’s team face-to-face during every legislative session since 2017.
It is a proposal that would have prevented immense legal abuses of innocent families over the last five years, including a high-profile case that required the intervention of the Texas Supreme Court.
In 2017, I personally sat down with the Governor’s team to lay out a series of essential policy reforms necessary to protect parental rights in Texas. These included an extensive list of CPS reforms as well as various changes to ensure the general right of parents to make decisions for their children was protected.
This last change would have ended the barbaric practice in Texas of allowing private parties, even including non-relatives, to take children from biological parents without even an accusation of abuse or neglect.
This proposal was ignored by the Governor and his team in 2017, 2019, and 2021. Yet, as of Thursday, it has managed to take first place on Governor Abbott’s list of parental rights reforms.
During each of these three legislative sessions, I was given an audience by Governor Abbott’s policy team, told to “keep them informed,” and was sent on my way. Each time, Governor Abbott refused to take any position on the bills.
Without participation from Governor Abbott, in 2017 and 2021, we worked with a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to pass extensive CPS reforms.
Every other parental rights reform failed to pass and died without comment from Governor Abbott, including the one now topping his priority list.
Governor Abbott remained silent on these legislative proposals even when, during the 2017 legislative session, a report from CPS revealed that, in up to 75% of their cases, parents were being accused of crimes that nobody, including CPS, believed they had committed.
Instead of weighing in to support an urgently needed legislative fix, Governor Abbott appointed a workgroup to study the issue over the next two years and draft a proposed solution–a solution which he then refused to address when it was presented by the workgroup during the 2019 legislative session.
In the summer of 2019, the parental rights discussion blanketed Texas airwaves and social media when CPS removed 4-year-old Drake Pardo from his family without any evidence of wrongdoing. After a six-month battle all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, CPS quietly dropped the case and returned the child home. Many of the issues raised in the case were issues we had drafted and presented legislative solutions for in the 2017 and 2019 legislative sessions, proposals for which we had fruitlessly requested Governor Abbott’s help.
During our battle to defend the Pardo family, my team and I personally delivered more than 40,000 petition signatures to Governor Abbott asking him to intervene. Despite intervention from numerous lawmakers and the Texas Attorney General, we got no response from Governor Abbott.
In 2020, another high-profile parental rights case reached the Texas Supreme Court. Again, the case had grown directly out of problems in the Texas family code which we had drafted legislation to solve and which we had presented to Governor Abbott’s team to address in both 2017 and 2019.
In that case, a father had his daughter taken away and sent to live with an unrelated man she barely knew. The father was never accused of abuse or neglect of any kind. Again, we intervened, launching a statewide campaign to defend the family and filing a brief with the Texas Supreme Court. In what may be the most significant parental rights case in Texas history, the court ruled unanimously for the daughter to be returned home.
Following these two cases, I again sat down face-to-face with Governor Abbott’s senior policy team to discuss the array of parental rights issues needing reform. I presented our legislative solutions and I asked specifically what their plan was to solve these problems.
In response, I was told that they could not share Governor Abbott’s opinions on those topics, they asked me to keep them informed, and they sent me on my way.
In the 2021 legislative session, we again brought to the table extensive CPS reforms, most of them reforms which had been raised and pitched to Governor Abbott’s previously, but to no avail. We also brought back legislation defining the right of parents to make decisions for their children. This is a right which, according to our research, 45% of appellate court opinions since the year 2000 found to have been misapplied by lower courts.
Nearly every CPS reform presented during the 2021 legislative session passed with near-unanimous support from the Texas Legislature. Yet, not only did Governor Abbott never express any support for these bills, when the flagship CPS reform bill reached his desk after the 2021 legislative session, he let it go into law without his signature or comment.
Every other parental rights reform presented during the 2021 legislative session, including the one now at the top of Governor Abbott’s list of priorities, died without his intervention.
Governor Abbott’s Thursday announcement also spoke boldly in favor of parental rights in education. For more than 20 years, including every legislative session since Governor Abbott originally took office, THSC has pushed legislation to allow homeschool families access to the public school UIL extracurricular activities that their tax dollars pay for–a policy nearly 40 other states currently allow.
Every session since Governor Abbott took office we requested his support for this key legislation favoring parental rights in education. Every legislation session we got no response.
In 2021, the homeschool community fought tooth and nail and finally got the UIL Equal Access bill passed with overwhelming bi-partisan support.
It was only after this 20 year battle, a herculean, bi-partisan effort in the legislature, and the complete delivery of the legislation all of the way through the political labyrinth directly to Governor Abbott’s desk that he finally expressed an opinion by signing the bill.
In other words, it was only after the political battle was essentially over that Governor Abbott was willing to express his support.
For the last five years, Governor Abbott’s rhetoric on parental rights has been weak, and his policy initiatives have been AWOL. Now, suddenly, his rhetoric is bold.
Given our past experience attempting to garner Governor Abbott’s support on parental rights issues, we were surprised to see his Thursday announcement boldly speaking in favor of a parent’s bill of rights.
Having said that, we welcome to the battle any politician who joins the fight sincerely intending to defend Texas families. In that sense, Governor Abbott’s new rhetoric on parental rights is an encouragement. If he sincerely intends to make the defense of parental rights a cornerstone of his policy initiatives, he will find no greater ally in that battle than THSC and homeschool families.
However, as always, these promises should be measured by results, not rhetoric.
We will see if his parental rights policy initiatives will finally be able to remove themselves from the corner, dust themselves off, and get something done… or whether that rhetoric was only intended to last as long as it had political utility.
If the first, we will be there alongside him to lead in that effort, loudly declaring his dedication to Texas families. If the second, we will be entirely candid in our assessment of that failure.
Will this new rhetoric lead to actual policy results? Time will tell.
-Jeremy Newman, THSC Deputy Director
Do you want to stay informed about parental rights? THSC believes that parents should be empowered to raise and educate the next generation of leaders. As a THSC member, we support your family to do just that! Join THSC today and sign up for our newsletters to stay up-to-date.
Jeremy Newman, THSC Deputy Director
Jeremy has served as the Policy Director for THSC since 2013. In 2022, he became THSC’s first Deputy Director. He teaches Lincoln-Douglas debate in the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association (NCFCA). He currently lives in Fort Worth with his wife, Addi, and two sons, Wyatt and Declan.
