The Parental Rights Amendment: FAQ, Part Two of Two
This is the conclusion of a two-part introduction to The Parental Rights Amendment. The first part can be found here.
4. Won’t a federal constitutional amendment give the federal government control over parental rights?
Unlike 8 of the last 15 amendments, the proposed Parental Rights Amendment does not contain a clause empowering Congress to pass legislation in order to enforce its protections. As a result, Congress is not granted any additional authority by this Amendment, nor is the executive branch. The courts receive no additional authority either – they already have the power and responsibility to protect personal rights from intrusions of federal, state, or local law. As it is written, this amendment merely requires the judiciary to include parental rights among those liberties which they protect.
5. Isn’t State law, including family law, already protected under the 10th Amendment?
The Tenth Amendment does not permit the States to violate individual rights. The Supreme Court in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) found that the personal liberty protections of the Bill of Rights limit both state and federal governments. Neither does the Tenth Amendment protect parental rights. There is not a single case in which the Tenth Amendment serves as a basis for protecting parental rights.
The Tenth Amendment also offers no protection against an international treaty adopted by the United States. “To the extent that the United States can validly make treaties, the people and the States have delegated their power to the National Government and the Tenth Amendment is no barrier.” Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 18 (1957). If the federal government ratified the CRC, the Tenth Amendment would not prevent family law from becoming a federal treaty obligation and therefore no longer a matter of state law.
This feature article is from a publication distributed by ParentalRights.org: Protecting Children by Empowering Parents. Published with permission from ParentalRights.org.
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