Going Round the Leg­isla­tive Loop
cir­ca 1990s

The fol­low­ing extreme­ly well-doc­u­ment­ed arti­cle from the 1990s sheds con­sid­er­able light on the pre­vi­ous two posts that inves­ti­gat­ed Michael Far­ris of HSLDA: Far­ris’s Fer­ris Wheel… and Going Round the Far­ris Wheel. It was authored by Mary McCarthy and is repub­lished with her permission.
THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RESTORATION ACT (RFRA),
THE PARENTAL RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES ACT (PRRA),
THE RESTORING LOCAL SCHOOLS ACT (RLSA), and
THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AMENDMENT

“…but one thing I had learned over the years is that if you sound as if you are moral­ly cer­tain, peo­ple will tend to believe you. So whether or not I know what I’m talk­ing about, I always try to sound moral­ly certain.”
– Paul Weyrich[1]

The Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act (RFRA) is “an act that restores the pro­tec­tion of free exer­cise of reli­gion which was severe­ly restrict­ed by the Supreme Court in Employ­ment Divi­sion v. Smith (1990).” The issue in this case was “whether the sacra­men­tal use of pey­ote by mem­bers of the Native Amer­i­can Church was pro­tect­ed under the free exer­cise clause of the first Amendment.”[2] In 1991, Home School Court Report indi­cat­ed that “ Michael Far­ris is an active par­tic­i­pant in the steer­ing com­mit­tee for this legislation.”[3] The leg­is­la­tion received wide sup­port from both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans in the Con­gress. “A coali­tion” of the var­i­ous groups sup­port­ing the RFRA, “appoint­ed a draft­ing com­mit­tee chaired by Michael Far­ris, pres­i­dent of the Home School Legal Defense Asso­ci­a­tion and for­mer long-time gen­er­al coun­sel for Con­cerned Women For Amer­i­ca. The co-chair was Marc Stern, gen­er­al coun­sel for the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Congress.[4]

The Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act of 1993 became Pub­lic Law 103–141 in Novem­ber of 1993. A case involv­ing St. Peter’s Church in Boerne, TX was decid­ed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which test­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the RFRA. The case con­cerned whether the Arch­dio­cese of San Anto­nio could demol­ish part of the his­toric 1923 church so as to make it larg­er or whether the Boerne His­toric Preser­va­tion Com­mis­sion could block those plans in order to pre­serve the church’s pic­turesque façade.

At issue was “whether the Con­gress went too far in pass­ing the law, which seemed to over­ride the Court’s own pre­vi­ous inter­pre­ta­tion of the Constitution.”[5] By a 6 to 3 vote, the jus­tices said Con­gress had usurped the court’s pow­er to define con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion of reli­gion and intrud­ed on the busi­ness of the states.[6]

In response to the neg­a­tive Supreme Court deci­sion Michael Far­ris wrote,

“Even though some mem­bers of Con­gress imme­di­ate­ly spoke of a leg­isla­tive rem­e­dy to the Court’s find­ing, there now seems to be no ques­tion that an amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion is going to be nec­es­sary to guar­an­tee the right of reli­gious peo­ple and insti­tu­tions to run their lives and their insti­tu­tions free from gov­ern­ment intru­sion unless that intru­sion can be jus­ti­fied by the most rig­or­ous form of legal scruti­ny. But even more appar­ent is the glar­ing need to free our­selves from the tyran­ny of nine elit­ists in robes who have com­man­deered both our free­doms and our government.”[7]

St. Peter’s Church and the city of Boerne have reached an agree­ment. The church will be able to demol­ish a sec­tion of the rear of the sanc­tu­ary and add a new one.[8]

The Reli­gious Free­dom Amend­ment (RFA) was intro­duced by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ernest J. Istook (R‑OK) on May 8, 1997 as H. J. Res. 78. When the U. S. Supreme Court declared the Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act (RFRA) uncon­sti­tu­tion­al Michael Far­ris called for intro­duc­tion of a Con­sti­tu­tion­al Amend­ment to replace it.[9]

It’s very impor­tant to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between the Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act (RFRA) and the Reli­gious Free­dom Amend­ment, which are two very dif­fer­ent pro­pos­als. The Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act (RFRA) was a law which guar­an­teed peo­ple would be free to express their reli­gion with­out undue inter­fer­ence from gov­ern­ment which had wide sup­port from a vari­ety of polit­i­cal and reli­gious lead­ers. The Reli­gious Free­dom Amend­ment (RFA) is a pro­posed amend­ment to the U. S. Con­sti­tu­tion, which would have far reach­ing effects. The pro­posed amend­ment states:

To secure the peo­ple’s right to acknowl­edge God accord­ing to the dic­tates of con­science: The peo­ple’s right to pray and to rec­og­nize their reli­gious beliefs, her­itage or tra­di­tions on pub­lic prop­er­ty, includ­ing schools, shall not be infringed. The gov­ern­ment shall not require any per­son to join in prayer or oth­er reli­gious activ­i­ty, ini­ti­ate or des­ig­nate school prayers, dis­crim­i­nate against reli­gion, or deny equal access to a ben­e­fit on account of religion.

Pro­po­nents claim the Amend­ment is nec­es­sary to reverse the trend of sup­press­ing reli­gious expres­sion, includ­ing prayer in pub­lic school, dis­play of reli­gious sym­bols in schools, work­places and pub­lic build­ings and dis­play of reli­gious sym­bols dur­ing hol­i­days. They cite as exam­ples removal of a cross from a San Fran­cis­co park, a stu­dent giv­en a fail­ing grade because she chose the life of Jesus Christ as her top­ic, and removal of cross­es from city seals. The Reli­gious Free­dom Amend­ment (RFA) pro­vides that stu­dents may ini­ti­ate prayers in schools but pro­hibits gov­ern­ment from com­pos­ing them or com­pelling any­one to join. It would per­mit par­ents to choose a reli­gious edu­ca­tion for their chil­dren in gov­ern­ment vouch­er pro­grams and pro­hib­it employ­ers from dis­cour­ag­ing reli­gious dis­cus­sions in the workplace.[10]

Oppo­nents claim it would remove the First Amend­ment pro­tec­tion guar­an­tee­ing sep­a­ra­tion of church and state per­mit­ting any group or indi­vid­ual to make reli­gious demands of pub­lic ser­vices such as schools or gov­ern­ment offices. They fear the phrase, “deny equal access to a ben­e­fit on account of reli­gion”, and estab­lish­es tax sup­port for all reli­gious groups giv­ing any sect a Con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pub­lic fund­ing. They also fear the Reli­gious Free­dom Amend­ment (RFA) would allow gov­ern­ments to endorse a spe­cif­ic reli­gion, for exam­ple, Mor­monism could be declared the offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized reli­gion in Utah or Catholi­cism in Boston. Oppo­nents claim the Reli­gious Free­dom Amend­ment is a step towards Theoc­ra­cy. [11]

The Parental Rights and Respon­si­bil­i­ty Act (PRRA) is the sec­ond reli­gious rights leg­isla­tive pro­pos­als HSLDA has been involved with. “Pri­mar­i­ly draft­ed by Michael Far­ris and Home School Legal Defense Asso­ci­a­tion attor­neys, the Parental Rights and Respon­si­bil­i­ties Act (PRRA) was intro­duced on June 28, 1995, in the House and Sen­ate as H.R. 1946 and S. 984.”[12] HSLDA through their Court Report con­tin­ues to lob­by exten­sive­ly for this con­tro­ver­sial parental rights legislation.

Pre­vi­ous­ly Michael Far­ris had worked with Sen­a­tor Grassley’s (R‑IA) to draft the Parental Rights Restora­tion Act.[13]

Besides HSLDA, many oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive groups are work­ing for pas­sage of parental rights leg­is­la­tion includ­ing Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange, Chris­t­ian Coali­tion, Con­cerned Women For Amer­i­ca, Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, Focus on the Fam­i­ly, and Of The Peo­ple. [14],[15]

Accord­ing to Of The Peo­ple, the PRRA was a bal­lot ini­tia­tive in Col­orado in 1996. It was passed by com­mit­tees in the leg­is­la­tures of NE, ND, VA and WA either in 1995 or 1996. It has been intro­duced or has spon­sor com­mit­ments in AK, AL, AZ, CA, DE, FL, GA, HI, IA, IL, KS, KY, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NY, OH, OR, PA, SC, TX, and WI.

The con­tro­ver­sy cen­ters on sup­port­ers who believe pas­sage would ensure that par­ents, rather than gov­ern­ment, would have author­i­ty in many areas of child rear­ing. Con­cerns include inter­fer­ence with cor­po­ral dis­ci­pline, access to their children’s school, inter­fer­ence with health care deci­sions and parental access to their school, health and social ser­vice records. Crit­ics fear the reli­gious right is attempt­ing to gain con­trol of pub­lic school cur­ricu­lums, pre­vent author­i­ties from inves­ti­gat­ing child abuse charges and would inter­fere with respond­ing to out­breaks of disease.

Accord­ing to Alan Carl­son of the Rock­ford Institute:

“Fed­er­al par­ents’ rights leg­is­la­tion sounds like a good idea, but it makes for dan­ger­ous pol­i­cy. Fam­i­ly pol­i­cy has his­tor­i­cal­ly been regard­ed as a Tenth Amend­ment issue, one that’s with­in the purview of the states… How­ev­er, the prob­lem will not be solved by hav­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment get into the busi­ness of defin­ing par­ents’ rights.

That the fed­er­al parental rights leg­is­la­tion would redesign Amer­i­can fam­i­ly pol­i­cy is illus­trat­ed in an analy­sis offered by Sen­a­tor John Warn­er (R‑VA), a co-spon­sor of the Sen­ate ver­sion: “Under this act, before the US gov­ern­ment could inter­fere in the par­ent-child rela­tion­ship, the gov­ern­ment would have to show that the action is nec­es­sary to pro­tect a com­pelling inter­est and that the means that the gov­ern­ment uses to pro­tect this inter­est is the least restric­tive avail­able.’ Sen­a­tor Warn­er is acknowl­edg­ing that the mea­sure would, for the first time in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, autho­rize direct fed­er­al involve­ment in the home if that involve­ment can be swad­dled in the ratio­nale of a gov­ern­ment-defined ‘com­pelling interest’.”[16]

It should be not­ed that Sen­a­tor John Warn­er and Michael Far­ris have sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences and are not polit­i­cal allies. In 1996, Michael Far­ris attempt­ed to replace Sen­a­tor Warn­er at Virginia’s Repub­li­can State Cen­tral Com­mit­tee meet­ing with James C. Miller III as the sen­a­to­r­i­al can­di­date in retal­i­a­tion for Sen­a­tor Warner’s refusal to sup­port Michael Far­ris’ 1993 bid for Lt. Governor.[17] Pre­vi­ous­ly, Michael Far­ris had been sug­gest­ed as “a like­ly Repub­li­can can­di­date for Sen­a­tor from Vir­ginia in 1996.”[18]

In Novem­ber 1996, vot­ers in Col­orado defeat­ed the parental rights bal­lot mea­sure, which would have required an amend­ment to the State con­sti­tu­tion, by 44% to 56%.[19] “A pro­posed parental rights amend­ment to the Vir­ginia Con­sti­tu­tion has been nar­row­ly defeat­ed in the state’s Sen­ate. Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives had pushed for the amend­ment, which was defeat­ed 21–19 on Jan­u­ary 28.”[20] HSLDA pro­vid­ed $70,000 to Of The Peo­ple to “to pro­vide sup­port for edu­ca­tion and media relat­ed to parental rights amend­ment to Col­orado Constitution.”[21]

In March of 1997, Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Car­di­nale of New Jer­sey intro­duced Sen­ate Con­cur­rent Res­o­lu­tion (SCR) 114 propos­ing a parental rights amend­ment to the New Jer­sey Con­sti­tu­tion. It reads:

“Amend Arti­cle I by adding a new para­graph 23, as follows:
23. (a) The right of par­ents to direct the upbring­ing and edu­ca­tion of their chil­dren shall not be infringed.
(b) The Leg­is­la­ture shall have the pow­er to define and enforce, by appro­pri­ate leg­is­la­tion, the pro­vi­sions of the paragraph.”

That there can be no doubt as to the source of parental rights pro­pos­als, the last para­graph of New Jersey’s pro­pos­al states:

“The ‘Parental Rights Amend­ment’ has been intro­duced by leg­is­la­tors in at least 29 states to date…Major pro-fam­i­ly orga­ni­za­tions are work­ing for he adop­tion of the amend­ment across the nation, includ­ing the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, Focus on the Fam­i­ly, the Chris­t­ian Coali­tion, Con­cerned Women for Amer­i­ca, Of the Peo­ple, and the Home School Legal Defense Asso­ci­a­tion. This amend­ment com­ple­ments fed­er­al parental rights leg­is­la­tion which has been intro­duced by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steve Largent of Okla­homa and Sen­a­tor Charles Grass­ley of Iowa.”[22]

In July of 1997, the San Diego Coun­ty school board con­sid­ered a Parental Involve­ment Ini­tia­tive sub­mit­ted by San­tee res­i­dent, Bob Ward, seek­ing to allow par­ents to exempt their chil­dren from activ­i­ties or teach­ing mate­ri­als they deem objec­tion­able. It also would give par­ents the right to exempt their chil­dren from hav­ing to read text­books con­sid­ered to be a vio­la­tion of con­science or reli­gious beliefs. “I think this could be very impor­tant,” said Bob Heck­man of Of The Peo­ple, a parental-rights group head­quar­tered in Arling­ton, Va. “Par­ents are very frus­trat­ed. We see that in all the polling. This could very well be an approach that par­ents around the coun­try uti­lize.” Michael Far­ris, pres­i­dent of the Vir­ginia-based Home School Legal Defense Asso­ci­a­tion, agreed. “San Diego is on the cut­ting edge of a new trend,” he said. “This is the kind of thing that is going to be nec­es­sary to stop the exo­dus from pub­lic schools.”

The school board decid­ed to table the mea­sure and con­sid­er it again in six months. It is inter­est­ing to note that one of the pri­ma­ry argu­ments, that of cur­ricu­lum selec­tion, caused Julie McIn­tosh, vice pres­i­dent of the Ninth Dis­trict Par­ent-Teacher Asso­ci­a­tion to com­ment, “Par­ents have choice now… Par­ents have the legal right to edu­cate their chil­dren at home and that is giv­ing them entire con­trol.” El Cajon par­ent David Kid­der said while home-school­ing is an option, he and oth­er par­ents who may want to teach their chil­dren don’t always have the resources to do it. “The biggest prob­lem is that a home school takes mon­ey” Kid­der said. Con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions that are fol­low­ing the parental-rights issue nation­al­ly said that the San Diego ini­tia­tive was an impor­tant mod­el for advanc­ing their agen­da elsewhere.[23], [24]

Of the Peo­ple is the pri­ma­ry advo­cate of the Parental Rights pro­pos­als. It is locat­ed in Arling­ton, Vir­ginia and oper­at­ed by Jef­frey Bell, who serves as Pres­i­dent and a direc­tor. Oth­er offi­cers of the cor­po­ra­tion are Sec­re­tary and direc­tor Ralph Benko of MD, Trea­sur­er and direc­tor Fran­cis P. Can­non of VA, and direc­tors Lewis Lehrman of PA and John Mueller of Wash­ing­ton D.C.

The Restor­ing Local Schools Act is the third of the series. Cur­rent­ly, it has no spon­sor in Con­gress. The pur­pose of the Act is to elim­i­nate the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, some­thing Michael Far­ris addressed in his 1995 arti­cle, “End Fed­er­al Med­dling in Education”.[25]

In 1995, HSLDA’s Court Report pub­li­ca­tion explained that “The Nation­al Cen­ter for Home Edu­ca­tion has pre­pared leg­is­la­tion to deci­sive­ly end the fed­er­al role in edu­ca­tion. At this stage, Christo­pher Klic­ka, Michael Far­ris, and Doug Phillips have been work­ing to secure spon­sors for the bill.”[26] In 1996, HSLDA revised their plan into a “three-step process: 1) first, work to abol­ish Goals 2000 and School-to-Work; 2) In sub­se­quent years, push to abol­ish the Fed­er­al Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and 3) long-term, work to abol­ish the whole fed­er­al role in edu­ca­tion (about $60 billion).”[27]

Crit­ics con­tend that elim­i­na­tion of the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion would just throw it’s cur­rent duties to oth­er agen­cies. Two pro­posed bills (H.R. 1883 and The Restor­ing Local Schools Act) would have placed the func­tions of the Depart­ment Of Edu­ca­tion into the Sec­re­tary of Health and Human Ser­vices depart­ment. “Under both bills, ‘Local Edu­ca­tion Enti­ty’ is defined as mean­ing ‘a local edu­ca­tion­al agency or a pub­lic or pri­vate ele­men­tary or sec­ondary school.”[28] It appears the Restor­ing Local Schools Act would put pri­vate schools under gov­ern­ment con­trol for pur­pos­es of the block grant fund­ing pro­posed to replace Depart­ment Of Edu­ca­tion funding.

The Home School Legal Defense Asso­ci­a­tion and it’s sub­sidiary, the Nation­al Cen­ter for Home Edu­ca­tion, has active­ly lob­bied for all three of these leg­isla­tive pro­pos­als, enlist­ing home­school­ers in their efforts to influ­ence Con­gress on behalf of these spe­cif­ic con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal issues. Whether or not par­ents rec­og­nize what the pos­si­ble con­se­quences of these pro­pos­als are is questionable.

“That Reli­gion, or the duty which we owe to our Cre­ator, and the man­ner of dis­charg­ing it, can be direct­ed only by rea­son and con­vic­tion, not by force or vio­lence; and, there­fore, all men are equal­ly enti­tled to the free exer­cise of reli­gion, accord­ing to the dic­tates of con­science; and that it is the mutu­al duty of all to prac­tice Chris­t­ian for­bear­ance, love, and char­i­ty, towards each other.”[29]

End­notes:
[1] William Mar­tin, “With God On Our Side” op. cit., page 171–2.
[2] “Ques­tions And Answers” FAQ sheet from Coali­tion for the Free Exer­cise of Religion.
[3] “Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act to be Refiled in 102nd Con­gress”, Home School Court Report, Vol. 7, No. 2, March/April 1991, page 15.
[4] “The Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act – A His­to­ry”, Home School Court Report, Vol. 7, No. 4, July/August 1992, page 3.
[5] San Howe Ver­hovek, “Friend­ly Lit­tle City Split on Big Issue”, The New York Times, April 20, 1997, page 18.
[6] Joan Biskupic, “Supreme Court Over­turns Reli­gious Prac­tice Statute,” The Wash­ing­ton Post, June 26, 1997, page A01.
[7] Michael Far­ris, “Jus­tices Usurp Final Word on Church-State Mat­ters,” Human Events, July 4, 1997, page 4.
[8] “Church and Town Set­tle a His­toric Dis­pute, Newark Star-Ledger, 8/17/97, Sec­tion 10, page 8.
[9] Michael Far­ris, “Jus­tices Usurp Final Word on Church-State Mat­ters,” op.cit..
[10] Con­cerned Women For America.
[11] Amer­i­cans Unit­ed for Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State.
[12] “Parental Rights Dra­ma Unfolds”, Home School Court Report, Vol. 11, No. 6, Decem­ber 1995/January 1996, page 16.
435 Michael Far­ris, “Con­ser­v­a­tive Cam­paign Cel­e­bra­tions Cre­ate Cheer­ful­ness” The Teach­ing Home, January/ Feb­rua ry 1995 page 61.
[14] Kim A. Law­ton, “The Right to Par­ent: Should It Be Fun­da­men­tal?”, Chris­tian­i­ty Today. April 29, 1996, page 57.
[15] John R. Cole, “The New ‘Parental Rights’ Cru­sade, The Human­ist, March/April 96, page 41.
[16] William Nor­man Grigg, “Does the State Own Your Child?”, The New Amer­i­can (Mag­a­zine), July 8, 1996, page 7.
[17] “Sen­a­tor Wins Par­ty Tus­sle in Vir­ginia”, New York Times, Decem­ber 10, 1995, Sec. 1, page 35.
[18] Leslie Kauf­man, “Life Beyond God”, New York Times Mag­a­zine, Octo­ber 14, 1994, page 49.
[19] “Ref­er­en­dums and Oth­er Elec­tions”, Asso­ci­at­ed Press, USA Today, Novem­ber 6, 199 6. Page 22A.
[20] “Parental Rights’ los­es in Vir­ginia”, Chris­t­ian Cen­tu­ry, Feb­ru­ary 19, 1997, page 185.
[21] Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, HSLDA Form 990, Return of Orga­ni­za­tion Exempt from Income Tax­es, Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice., 1996.
[22] Sen­ate Con­cur­rent Res­o­lu­tion No. 114, State of New Jer­sey, Intro­duced March 10, 1997 by Sen­a­tor Car­di­nale. http://njleg.state.nj.us
[23] Emmet Pierce and Susan Gem­brows­ki, “Nation eyes parental-rights vote | Coun­ty school board gets grass-roots issue tonight “, San Diego Union Tri­bune, July 9, 1997, page A1.
[24] Susan Gem­brows­ki, “Parental ‘veto’ is tabled in coun­ty | Board won’t dic­tate to 43 school dis­tricts”, San Diego Union Tri­bune, July 10, 1997, page B‑1.
[25] Michael Far­ris, “End Fed­er­al Med­dling in Edu­ca­tion”, Human Events, Vol. 51, Issue 15, April 21, 1995, page 14.
[26] “Bill in the Works to Abol­ish Fed­er­al Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion”, Home School Court Report, Vol. 11, No. 5, Sep/Oct/Nov 1995, page 23.
[27] “Abol­ish­ing Fed­er­al Role in Edu­ca­tion”, Home School Court Report, Vol. 13, N o. 1, Jan/Feb 1997, page 3.
[28] Cyn­thia Weath­er­ly, “Is Free­dom Burn­ing? Or Has the Tis­sue Paper Just Caught Fire?”, Chris­t­ian Con­science Mag­a­zine, Decem­ber 1995. [Ed Note: This arti­cle is cur­rent­ly avail­able online, at page 7 here: http://deliberatedumbingdown.com/OtherPDFs/Conference%20Speakers.pdf]
[29] Vir­ginia Dec­la­ra­tion of Rights, June 12, 1776, Arti­cle 16.