So all they are saying here is that they weren’t addressing the issue of the level of scrutiny required for parental rights other than that without doubt they must give the determination of the parents some special weight where the trial courts opinion gave the parent’s determination whatsoever. That alone is sufficient to overturn the trial court’s opinion, and therefore the Supreme Court did not need to address what level of scrutiny would need to be applied, since in this case, no level was applied. The Court generally goes only as far as is required to resolve a case. They did not need to resolve the level of scrutiny to apply to parental rights to resolve the case so they did not do so. There has never been a supreme court opinion that directly sets the level of scrutiny required for parental rights in general. When parental rights are tied to a free exercise right under the 1st amendment, the Supreme Court has required enhanced scrutiny. The court has also declared parental rights to be a privacy right in several cases; in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court was adamant that privacy rights get strict scrutiny protection. So although they have never directly determined what level of scrutiny parental rights receive, they have done so indirectly. And, in addition, every aspect of constitutional amendments are not necessarily granted strict scrutiny protection, eg. Corporate speech does not get strict scrutiny protection. Hope this helps. We are always trying to help parents, attorneys, judges, and parental rights organizations avoid rabbit holes. Thanks for sharing your understanding of the cases here. That helps us better help with the articulation of them so that everyone can have more success. For those of you that have read our book, “Not in the Child’s Best Interest,” you probably already knew this.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 03:11:36 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015