Refresh, refresh, refresh.
Is it because I want to know what happened in the Florida primaries or because I want to know if Betty went Pi Delta Pi or Omega Mu?
Ryan Barack
@law4employees.bsky.social
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Board Certified Labor and Employment Lawyer. Complex employment and civil rights litigation for humans. Tampa Bay based but always a Pittsburgh guy. www.employeerights.com
![As explained below, county school boards (school boards") must grant RTRI requests. But certain school boards within Florida have either provided blanket denials for RTRI programs or placed various restrictions on the offerings of RTRI. Some school boards, for example, have prohibited the release of students during school hours, and others have enacted policies restricting students of certain grade-levels from participating in RTRI. Both practices violate Florida law.
ANALYSIS
Parental rights and corresponding duties are fundamental and prepolitical.
They do not arise from or require written law to exist or be effective.
Luckily, how-
ever, Florida's constitution and laws fully recognize and protect them. And Florida statutes further affirm these rights and duties by granting broad authority to parents to direct both the education and the "moral and religious training" of their children.4
Most relevant here is section 1003.21(2)(b)1., Florida Statutes, which provides
that every school board in the State of Florida,
"in accordance with the rules of the
State Board of Education, shall adopt policies authorizing a parent to request and be granted permission for absence of a student from school" to attend "[r]eligious instruction or religious holidays." This parallels section 1002.20(2)(c), Florida Statutes, which ensures that "[a] parent of a public school student may request and be granted permission for absence of the student from school for religious instruction or religious holidays" consistent with section 1003.21. As the Florida Supreme Court has con-
firmed: "The word 'shall' is mandatory in nature."" Clearly, then, Florida law requires school districts to grant parental requests for their children to participate in RTRI.
Crucially, RTRI enables parents to honor their sacred duties to raise their children in the faith. The LORD-author of our natural rights and duties-requires nothing less: "And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You sha…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ybldpffkpxj5x4dititz2pwd/bafkreignvqaxpilzvst4jjepope2osdtravom2hdl4axqybemxho36tlmy)
![Parents' exercise of these rights and duties redound to the State's benefit.
First, it relieves the State of the primary cost and responsibility of shaping the civic and moral character of succeeding generations. Second, it ensures that succeeding generations of citizens are properly shaped in terms of civic, moral, and religious character-an ingredient essential to the maintenance and longevity of our republican system of government. After all, "lolur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." The Framers of the Florida Constitution acknowledged the same.8
It is natural and proper, therefore, for civil authorities to recognize and protect
these rights.
In fact, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that such rights are "per-
haps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized." And many giants of the western legal tradition have recognized that parental rights inhere in the very nature of the family unit. Children do not understand "how to govern themselves."10 Their "wants and weaknesses" thus "render it necessary that some person maintains them" until adulthood.!! Parents have traditionally been entrusted as "the most fit and proper person[s]" for that task. 12 Parental duties being firmly established, there must be adequate space to perform them. So the common law equipped parents with equally robust parental rights.
"[H]ousehold heads" were empowered to "speak for
their dependents in dealings with the larger world,"13 and parents enjoyed the "right ... to govern their children's growth. "14
This natural, prepolitical right over one's child includes the right to direct the child's education, and their religious upbringing. RTRI fits comfortably within these two domains.
works of God, but keep his commandments(.J"); Ephesians 6:4 (Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.").
7 John Adams, Letter to Massachusett…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ybldpffkpxj5x4dititz2pwd/bafkreiccfryizvvyb2o2zl3x5qtkl24nwmorf3sitlotdmgdw46bib6wtq)
