Homeschooling has produced the greatest inventor in history (Thomas Edison), many great mathematicians, innovative businessmen such as Andrew Carnegie, and leading statesmen including Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

Today, parents homeschool to give their children a better education than that offered by public schools, and to avoid a public school culture and curriculum that are hostile to their values. Added benefits are freedom from drugs, gangs, sex ed, suicide ed, and other highly objectionable aspects of schools.

But according to a California appellate court, homeschooling is illegal. That was the ruling in a child welfare dispute between Philip and Mary Long and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. Jonathan L. and Mary Grace L. v. Superior Court, B192878 (Ct. App. 2nd App. Dist., Div. 3, Feb. 28, 2008); http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/B192878.PDF. Mary Long is the homeschooling teacher and mother of eight children who holds a law degree, but no formal teaching credential. A state child protection agency had been pursuing Philip Long for alleged mistreatment of the children, but a juvenile court judge refused its request that the children be forced into school. The juvenile judge held that parents have a right to educate their children at home. The appellate court then overruled this decision, and ordered the lower court to compel the children to enroll in a traditional school.

This decision sparked widespread outrage. The Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, denounced it; his Secretary of Education promised not to enforce it. The president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, Michael Smith, observed that this ruling bans homeschooling statewide: “California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of homeschooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home.”

The California appellate court held that parents have no constitutional right to homeschool, and that California law mandates public school attendance unless a child is attending a private school or being tutored by someone having a formal teaching credential. Going further, the court held that this specific instance of homeschooling is a “deprivation of the children’s right to a public education.” It dismissed the family's statements that they wanted their children educated in a Christian environment as too easy to fabricate, though one wonders why anyone would lie about such a thing.

The court even reinterpreted and limited the pro-parental rights decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972). The court held that this famous precedent should be confined to the unique characteristics of the Amish community, including its centuries worth of traditions. The court refused to apply the basic parental rights established in that decision to non-Amish parents who homeschool.

This California decision is part of an alarming erosion in parental rights over the upbringing and education of their children. As union-controlled public schools increase their biased indoctrination of students, courts are simultaneously denying the rights of parents to do anything to escape or stop it.

The California court subsequently granted a motion for reconsideration of its decision, but then alarmed parents further by requesting that the teachers' union submit a brief on the issues.