At a time when Americans seem to disagree about almost everything, there remains one principle deeply rooted in our constitutional tradition, our legal history and our national character:
Parents, not government, bear the primary responsibility for directing the education and religious upbringing of their children.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier recently reaffirmed that truth in an opinion addressing release time religious instruction programs. He wrote in response to an important question raised by Sen. Clay Yarborough, and to the School Districts of his state, but everyone should listen, whether in the Sunshine State or elsewhere.
His conclusion is straightforward: When parents choose to add religious instruction as part of their child’s education, public schools must respect and accommodate that decision. In doing so, the Attorney General did more than answer a narrow legal question. He reaffirmed a foundational American principle that too often is forgotten.
For more than a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently recognized that parents possess the primary authority to guide their children’s education and formation. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Court famously declared that “the child is not the mere creature of the State.” In Wisconsin v. Yoder, 47 years later, the Court protected parents’ ability to direct their children’s religious education from government interference.
More recently, in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Court again recognized that parents retain primary responsibility for their children’s upbringing, especially where matters of faith and conscience are concerned.
This principle exists for a simple reason: Parents bear the responsibility to provide for their child’s education. Or, as the Supreme Court put it in Meyer v. Nebraska, “it is the natural duty of the parent to give his children education suitable to their station in life.” The Court would later note in Pierce that this includes the “high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations” — obligations left unmet by public education alone.
Thus, our public schools play an important role, but one of support and service to parents who entrust part of their children’s education to public schools. Schools exist to serve families, not to supplant them.
Religious beliefs are more than extracurricular preferences. They are among the deepest convictions a person can hold. For countless families, faith provides the moral framework through which they understand their obligations to others, their purpose in life and their responsibilities as citizens. Parents who seek religious instruction for their children are not asking the government to endorse their beliefs.
They are simply exercising a parental duty that the government is meant to protect.
Release time religious instruction programs provide one way for parents to exercise that privileged duty. With parental permission, students leave campus during part of the school day to receive religious instruction off school property. The Supreme Court upheld such programs more than 70 years ago in Zorach v. Clauson, recognizing that accommodating religion reflects the “best of our traditions” as a nation.
Yet in recent years, some School Districts have erected unnecessary barriers to these programs. Some have refused to cooperate. Others have imposed restrictions that make participation purposefully difficult or impossible. Such policies reflect a misunderstanding of the relationship between schools and parents.
The question is not whether school officials personally agree with a family’s religious choices. The question is who gets to make those choices.
The answer, in America, is parents.
Attorney General Uthmeier’s opinion rightly recognizes that School Districts in Florida cannot frustrate parental decisions simply because administrators prefer a different approach. Public education should complement parental authority, not compete with it. When parents decide that religious instruction is an important component of their child’s education, schools should respect that choice.
The broader lesson extends well beyond release time programs.
Parents have both the right and the responsibility to make decisions concerning the upbringing of their children. Government serves families best when it respects that authority rather than attempting to replace it.
Our nation is strongest when parents are empowered to fulfill their duties. Children flourish when mothers and fathers are free to guide their intellectual, moral and spiritual development. And public institutions earn trust when they recognize that their role is to partner with parents, not overrule them.
The child is not the mere creature of the state. Never has been. Never should be.
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Jeremy Dys is Senior Counsel and Chair of the Education Practice Group for First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to defending religious freedom for all. Learn more at FirstLiberty.org.
