Mohamed Aly, born and raised in Egypt, lives in Canada. Amal Aden, born and raised in Somalia, lived in Minnesota until she and Aly met on a Muslim dating site and she moved to Canada. They married, and have a daughter, born in 2011. But Aden left Aly, taking the daughter back with her to […]
Archive | Parental Rights
North Great Neck Principal Says He Was Mistaken, Apologizes
Last week, I blogged about a letter sent by the principal of North Great Neck High School, a public high school on Long Island: We write this letter to inform you of a situation in our community about which we have deep concerns. There is a store front temple that serves kids free food and […]
Public High School Complaining About Off-Campus Proselytizing (During Lunch Hour)
[UPDATE: A week later, the principal said he had erred, and apologized.] Here’s a letter from the principal of Great Neck North High School, on Long Island: January 31, 2013 We write this letter to inform you of a situation in our community about which we have deep concerns. There is a store front temple […]
Equality vs. Liberty
The Center for Law and Religion Forum had a post a couple of weeks ago about a talk by Erwin Chemerinsky (dean of the new UC Irvine law school), in which he made a rather striking proposal. Indeed, Dean Chemerinsky has made the proposal in print several years ago, in an article titled Separate and […]
Foreign Child Custody Disputes Involving People Coming from Countries That Apply Islamic Family Law
By Eugene Volokh on December 30, 2012 2:36 pm in International Law, Islamic Law in the American Legal System, Parental Rights
From Souratgar v. Fair (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 26, 2012): Petitioner Abdollah Naghash Souratgar, an Iranian citizen, petitions this Court for the return of his son, Shayan, to Singapore. Shayan, who will soon be four years old, was born in Singapore and has Malaysian citizenship. Shayan’s mother, respondent Lee Jen Fair, a Malaysian citizen, left Singapore with […]
District Judges Split on Whether California Ban on Sexual Orientation Change Therapy for Minors Is Constitutional
By Eugene Volokh on December 5, 2012 10:18 am in Children's Rights, Freedom of Speech, Parental Rights
I was too swamped yesterday to blog about this, but Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) has a characteristically excellent summary: This week, two federal district court judges in the Eastern District of California, in two separate cases, reached opposite conclusions about the constitutionality of California’s new law (effective Jan. 1, 2013) totally banning mental health […]
N.Y. Court Denies Parents’ Request to Change Last Name of Children
The problem? The parents wanted to change the children’s last name to a name other than either the mother’s or the father’s, plus (and it’s not clear how relevant this ended up being) they had changed one child’s name three years before. From In re Kobra, 2012 WL 5373490 (N.Y. City Civ. Ct. Oct. 26): […]
When Parents Disagree, Should Child Bear the Mother’s Last Name or the Father’s?
Veronica Goudreau and Andrew Lemieux conceived a child, Alexander. (As it happens, they were minors, in high school, but that needn’t matter for the legal analysis.) They then broke up, but Lemieux wants to help raise the child. When the child was born, Goudreau named the child Alexander Bailey Goudreau. But when the child was […]
English Court Lets 10-Year-Old Girl Choose to Be Baptised, Over Jewish Mother’s Objections (but with Christian Father’s Permission)
By Eugene Volokh on August 6, 2012 1:18 pm in Child Custody and Constitutional Law, Children's Rights, Parental Rights, Religious Freedom
There’s been some recent buzz about this court decision, In the Matter of C (Romford County Ct. May 11, 2012); see, for instance, here, here, and here. I tend to think the court decision is correct, and here’s why. The parents were nonobservant Jews for most of their marriage, but at the very end of […]
Do Nude Drawings Sent to Your Five-Year-Old Daughter Appeal to “a Prurient Interest in Sex of Minors”
Utah law, like the law of many states, bans the distribution to minors of “harmful-to-minors” material (for more on this, see this post). The Utah statute reads, “Harmful to minors” means that quality of any description or representation, in whatsoever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse when it: (i) taken as […]
Intentional Tortious Interference with Parental Rights
An interesting Virginia Supreme Court decision, Wyatt v. McDermott (Va. Apr. 20, 2012), recognizes this right. An excerpt (paragraph breaks added): John M. Wyatt, III, is seeking monetary damages for the [alleged] unauthorized adoption of his baby, herein referred to as E.Z. E.Z. is the biological daughter of Wyatt and Colleen Fahland, who are unmarried […]
California Bill Would Ban Psychotherapy Aimed at Changing Under-18-Year-Olds’ Same-Sex “Desires, Attraction, or Conduct”
By Eugene Volokh on April 25, 2012 3:25 pm in Children's Rights, Parental Rights, Religious Freedom, Sexual Orientation
The bill is SB 1172, and it bans “psychotherapy” of under-18-year-olds “aimed at altering the sexual or romantic desires, attractions, or conduct of a person toward people of the same sex so that the desire, attraction, or conduct is eliminated or reduced or might instead be directed toward people of a different sex.” This so […]
Foster Parenting and Religion
By Eugene Volokh on March 13, 2012 5:45 pm in Children's Rights, Parental Rights, Religion and the Law
From BK v. New Hampshire Dep’t of Health and Human Services (D.N.H. Mar. 7, 2012): This case raises the potentially important issue of whether state authorities violate the free exercise rights of children, or their parents, under the First Amendment by placing the children with foster families who subject them to practices abhorrent to their […]
Children’s Immunizations, and Disputes Between Divorced Parents
What happens when divorced parents with joint legal custody disagree about whether their child should be given the routine childhood immunizations? That’s the issue in Grzyb v. Grzyb (Va. Cir. Ct.), decided in mid-2009 but just uploaded to Westlaw a day or two ago. The Grzybs were the divorced parents of a 3-year-old girl, with […]
Parental Rights to Refuse Sibling-Sibling Visitation
In re D.S. (Ore. Sup. Ct. Feb. 16, 2012) is an interesting — and, as usual, sad — parental rights case. Father had four children living with him and his girlfriend: his daughter, D (age 14), his son, R (age 12, D’s full brother), his girlfriend’s son, G (age 5 or 6), and his and […]