Truth Bomb 1

Hi. I'm Ron Palmer with Fix Family Courts, and I'm here to give you a 1st Amendment Truth Bomb 

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that you can use to keep your judge under control basically. The constitution applies to your judge, 

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the constitution limits your judge, and you have rights and your children have rights. And 

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those rights have to be respected even in a child custody suit between fit parents. And, the most 

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important right you have, or the highest protected rights you have are the 1st Amendment rights. And, 

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I'm going to give you a series of 9 different Truth Bombs that will help you put in front 

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of your judge the requirement that your judge has to do more than just express his personal 

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viewpoint about what is best for your child. Your judge has to actually pass 1st Amendment scrutiny 

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before he can violate your rights, but you need to know what these rights are and you 

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need to understand how they apply. And here they are in simple terms, right. You're relationship 

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with your child is the source of constitutional protections for your parental rights. Let's say 

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that again. It is not the marriage between you and the child's other parent that provides the source 

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of your parental rights. If you are a natural parent, and the child is biologically yours, 

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then you have parental rights based on the association you established with your child. 

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A lot of people don't understand this. They are still stuck in this 19th century viewpoint 

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that your parental rights are somehow dependent on your marriage to the child's other parent. 

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And if that marriage goes away your parental rights go away. And the judges in the family 

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law courts and the family law code in every state in this country are based on this outdated 

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19th century beliefs that have been invalidated by the Supreme Court. And yet they continue in 

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family law. The way to stop them is to assert your rights strongly and powerfully, and force 

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these courts to justify what they are doing. Your rights are not rights based on marriage. 

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Your rights are individual rights. Your child's rights to you are individual rights. Not rights 

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related to a nuclear family or some fantasy idea of the perfect family. 

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They are individual. One parent, one child. That's a protected association by the Constitution. 

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And that association is protected as both an intimate and an expressive association 

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by the 1st Amendment. Many attorneys will try to argue with you that your 

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intimate association rights are only protected by the 14th Amendment and not by the 1st Amendment. 

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They will say that intimacy is protected under the definition of what is a liberty 

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interest under the 14th Amendment, not under the 1st Amendment speech protections. But they 

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are totally wrong. They argued this with me years ago and I dug and dug and dug until I 

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proved that they were wrong. And the Supreme Court of the United States says that they are wrong. 

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Now the test to this is very simple, any time an attorney throws this at you or a state court 

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judge throws this at you, you simply ask them. "You're Honor, how is it possible to have an 

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intimate association without expressing that intimacy to the other partner, and that partner 

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receiving that expression of intimacy? Without that there's no intimate association. Therefore, 

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an intimate association, while still a unique type of association, is undeniably an expressive 

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association. They cannot be separated. Now there are expressive associations that are not intimate 

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such as your belonging to a political party for instance. This is an expressive association of 

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all the members of the party. But all the members of that party are not intimate with one another, 

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they are not close, they don't share private aspects of their lives with one another, which 

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are the hallmarks of an intimate association. So, always, always, always, keep that in mind. You're 

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intimate and expressive association with your child is an individual right that you and your 

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child both have. It is protected as an individual right. It is protected as a 1st Amendment right. 

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And you, as a fit, natural parent have every right to establish this association and maintain it. 

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Now your minor child cannot protect their rights on their own. They cannot express 

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their rights on their own. But you as their fit parent have every right to say, "My child is going 

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to have an association with me. And because I am a fit parent that has a constitutionally protected 

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right to make this choice, my child and I share a 1st Amendment protected intimate and expressive 

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association." The Supreme Court has expressed this idea almost exactly like this, right. And, 

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let's talk about what they said. The Supreme Court said, "We have emphasized that the 1st Amendment 

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protects family relationships. That's about as simple as it gets. They said a whole lot of other 

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things in this sentence, but the pieces of this sentence that matter, that absolutely hold true 

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is that, "We have emphasized that the 1st Amendment protects family relationships. 

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Words of the Supreme Court not my words. So your state court judge and your opposing attorney can 

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argue all they want but they are not arguing with me and they are not arguing with you, 

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they are arguing with the United States Supreme Court. Good luck with that for them. Now one 

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of the things they'll throw at you is that the 1st Amendment says absolutely nothing 

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about association. They're right. The word "association" is not in the 1st Amendment. 

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So how is it a 1st Amendment protected right? It's what's called a penumbral right. Or it's 

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one of the rights that emanate from the 1st Amendment. And it's there and it's protected 

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precisely because the 1st Amendment protects speech. It doesn't protect speech in a vacuum. 

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It doesn't protect your right to speak in an empty room. It protects your right to speak 

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with other people. And it protects those other people's rights to receive what you have to say. 

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And that only happens if you can associate with those other people. And, therefore, 

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the right to association is undeniably essential and necessary to protect the right of speech. 

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And so that's where the right of association comes from and that's why it's a 1st Amendment right. 

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It's also protected by the 14th Amendment. And you will see this quite a bit as a liberty interest, 

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right. But that liberty interest, the definition of liberty in the 14th Amendment incorporates the 

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definitions of all of the protected elements of the 1st Amendment. That's how the Supreme Court 

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applies 1st Amendment protections to the states by incorporating 1st Amendment definitions into the 

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word liberty under the 14th Amendment. So even when the 14th Amendment protects your right of 

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association against state action it's protecting the definitions that are inherent in the 1st 

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Amendment, and those elements of individual liberty that the 1st Amendment protects. 

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So, in essence, when the court talks about 14th Amendment protections for association, it's not 

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talking about a different kind of association or a different definition of association, it's talking 

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about those associational definitions that are inherent in the 1st Amendment and the penumbral 

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right of 1st Amendment speech and association. This is critical for you in a child custody case 

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because you have the right to speak to your child, and as we'll see later, the right to educate your 

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child. And your child has the right to receive that speech from you. But from a purely intimate 

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standpoint, a close family standpoint, you have the right to share intimacy with your child, 

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explain to your child that you love your child, and that you care deeply about them and how they 

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feel and what they believe and how they're getting along in life. All those things that matter to us 

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from a concept of "matters of conscience." Not matters that the state can interfere with, 

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but private matters of personal choice in things like religion and your place in the world, 

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your place in the universe. These are things that come from the heart and come from the most 

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personal aspects of one's being. And they are protected as "matters of conscience." 

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And your intimate association with your child requires that expression, and it requires your 

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child to be able to receive that. So when your custody court interferes with that, 

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they are interfering with one of your most basic 1st Amendment rights. And your child's most 

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basic fundamental rights. And this is critical because there are rules that come along with 

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1st Amendment violations. And those rules are very strong. There are a lot of them. They are 

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well litigated. There are tons and tons of cases. The Supreme Court has said you have these rights. 

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The Supreme Court has said children has these rights -- minor children have these rights. And 

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they are protected against the government. They are not protected against parents from telling the 

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child what they can and can't say. But they are protected from the government telling your child 

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what they can and can't say or telling you what you can or can't say. So your state court judge 

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cannot become a super parent and start dictating to you what you can or cannot say to your child. 

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That is a clear violation of the 1st Amendment that will not survive 

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any kind of challenge under the family code or the idea of a child's best interest. It's just absurd. 

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And the courts would hold it so if they're proper courts applying 1st Amendment law, right. So your 

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rights to your child were inherently, when the constitution was created, and even when the 14th 

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Amendment, was ratified, your rights to your child were a special type of property right. So when 

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our founding fathers established the constitution, and they thought about protecting parental rights, 

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which surely they did because several of them were parents. Thomas Jefferson was a single parent. 

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His wife had died. And he spent many years abroad while his children, his daughters were in the care 

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of another family member. Do you think for a second Thomas Jefferson thought it was in the 

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government's power to take his children away from him just because he was away as a diplomat in 

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France, you're out of your mind. He did not. And he certainly thought the constitution protected 

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those rights under property law. Because children were considered a certain type of property. If you 

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go back far enough in your state's codes and how they dealt with custody rights, you'll find that 

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it was usually put into the state's property code. Now we can no longer tolerate the idea 

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of children as property even if it was a special kind of non-chattel property. It's not like they 

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were slaves. But they were treated as property in that the adult parent had pretty much total 

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control of them. Far more control than we have today. And rules of property were a good clean way 

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to deal with this because they were clear rules, they were well understood -- everybody understood 

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them -- and the courts knew how to deal with them and follow the strict scrutiny set of rules. 

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Now the problem with that of course was that the property laws were applied unequally, 

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right, and men owned all the property. Women weren't allowed to own property. 

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And that threw a big monkey wrench in all of these things. And so, in attempting to give women more 

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authority over their children they switched away from property rights. 

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And ultimately where they got to or where the Supreme Court got to is holding that when you 

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come forward and create and association with your child and take over the responsibility of 

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being a parent -- you care for the child, you look out for their interest. That means the 

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constitution protects your rights. That's how your rights get protected by the constitution. 

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Now with women it's presumed this happens because they carry the child in their bodies 

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for nine months, they give birth to the child, they are there obviously when they give birth, 

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and generally people are witnessing all this, so the bond between mother and child is presumed 

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because of this. Now there are situations where this presumption would not hold. For instance, 

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if the mother gave birth in isolation, nobody knew she was pregnant which happens occasionally. 

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And perhaps she abandons the child immediately after. She might not even have known she was 

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pregnant. It happens sometimes, women don't even know they are pregnant. They have babies just, 

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they don't know what's going on. So these kind of situations that presumption might not hold up, 

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right. Especially if the mother abandons the baby and the baby is found and later the mother 

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comes forward. Then there's some things that the mother has to do to prove it. But other than those 

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exceptional cases mother's are usually presumed to be parents, the natural parent. Fathers on the 

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other hand have to somehow assert their parental rights over their child. One of the ways this is 

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done is if you're married to the mother, then the law generally presumes that you're the natural 

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parent of the father, you're name goes on the birth certificate and it's all presumed. It's 

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presumed you're the biological father. If this is not the case, there are ways to challenge 

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all that. That's not what this is about. What the point is, because so many fathers deal with this, 

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is that the moment you come forward and take care of your child and build that parent-child 

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association. You're rights receive constitutional protection under the First Amendment. 

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This includes taking care of the mother while she is pregnant, right. Being there when the child's 

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born. Not necessarily in the room, but being there and caring for them, and bringing them home. And 

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doing all the things the new father would do with the child. Certainly feeding the child and caring 

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for the child -- all those things. If you do that, the constitution protects your rights. And it 

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protects them because of that association. That is the source of First Amendment. In the early days, 

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for all of our recorded history, before the early 1970s, the rights of parents didn't 

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come from the First Amendment or the association. The law held that the rights of parents came from 

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the marital relationship between the child's parents. If they were married to each other then 

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they were the parents because of that marriage. If they weren't married to each other then the father 

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had no rights to the child and the child had no rights to the father. These fathers weren't even 

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required to pay child support in a lot of places like Texas. There's a Supreme Court case about 

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this in Texas. Where they changed that ultimately after the 1970s. But the law was that the parents 

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of these illegitimate or bastard children were not required to even care for their children. 

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Now most of the time the mother had rights to the child, but that's not an absolute. A 

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lot of times the local governments took over the rights of the child, 

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so even the mother didn't have natural rights to the child if she had a child out of wedlock. 

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A lot of times they would take the child and give them to another couple, those kind of things. 

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Put them in homes for children. All kind of things went on under what were called the bastardy codes. 

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And then in the early 1970s a series of cases came to the Supreme Court on different subjects 

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all related to the legitimacy of children. And the courts ultimately said that the law cannot punish 

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a child for the sins of the parents. So if the parents do something that the government does not 

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like, it is cruel and unjust to punish the child for what the parents did. And this is the law. 

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And in all of those cases, there are about seven or eight, nine of them. 

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The courts held very clearly that the rights are individual rights not dependent on the marriage, 

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not dependent on a nuclear family. Individual -- one parent/one child creates a family unit 

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that is protected by the constitution. Now, this transformed the landscape everywhere in law where 

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rights between parents and children mattered -- inheritance law was a big one. And several 

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of these cases were about inheritance. And, but the one place it didn't catch on was in 

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family law between fit parents. So if you look at every family code in the state, or at least every 

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one we've evaluated, and we've evaluated quite a few of them. Every single one of these cases, 

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or the family codes is based on the outdated, discredited, overturned, 19th century beliefs 

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that your rights as a parent depend on your marriage to the child's other parent. 

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And this is evidenced in the statements that you will see in the family codes. One of them, for 

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instance in Texas, the judge is allowed to grant these natural parents rights, parental rights, 

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after they divorce. Well that begs the question, how can you grant a 

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right to someone who already has that right as a natural right protected by the constitution? 

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What this is telling you is that these family codes are presuming that the rights 

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disappear simply because you got divorced. And so that says they are following the old 19th 

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century bastardy codes that tied the rights of parents and children to the marriage. 

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Those are unconstitutional. There's no way around that. The famous case that said that fathers had 

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to care for their illegitimate children -- child support -- was a Texas case. It went to the United 

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States Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court said "knock it off Texas, if a legitimate 

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child is entitled to care then an illegitimate child is entitled to care." It's that simple. 

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There's no way around it because the rights are individual. So this is important to know. If 

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you know and you realize everything these family codes are doing and everything these child custody 

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judges are doing has no foundation, it's based on 19th century beliefs that are discredited, 

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overturned, and unconstitutional. Everything they are doing is wrong and they know it. 

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They only get away with it because you let them get away with it. And as long as you 

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continue to let them get away with it, they will continue to do what they've always done. 

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What we are suggesting is that you use your First Amendment rights to put a stop to this. 

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You let them know that you know your rights are individual and they cannot be taken away from 

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you simply because you either did not marry or because you divorced the child's other parent. 

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Because when they do, what that is, is punishing you and punishing the child for rights you're 

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exercising -- a constitutionally protected right of choice regarding marriage. 

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Your right to get married is a constitutionally protected choice. Your right to not get married 

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is a constitutionally protected choice. And your right to dissolve the marital association 

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is a constitutionally protected choice as association rights protected by the 1st Amendment. 

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The right to associate also includes your right not to associate either by never associating or 

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by terminating your association. And your state can't punish you for that, 

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and they certainly cannot punish your child for that. That's what they are doing. So knowing that 

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your rights are individual and are protected by the First Amendment is vital. So this knowledge, 

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individual First Amendment protected parental rights changes this game completely. 

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One of the things you'll realize after you realize the individual nature of the rights 

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and the First Amendment protected nature of the rights. Is that your ex is really not the enemy. 

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It feels like your ex is the enemy, and you've got a lot of emotion tied to the ex, 

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and the ex is certainly trying to take your rights away from you. But the ex has no state 

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power. They have no government power. They can try to take your rights away from you, but on 

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their own they cannot accomplish this. They have to reach out and exercise government power to take 

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these rights away from you. And the individual that does that is your child custody judge. 

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And your child custody judge is violating the constitution every single day of his or her life 

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and they know it; at least the intelligent ones know it. And it's your job to put them on the 

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spot and let them know that you know it too and you're not going to tolerate it. There's a lot 

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involved in that and we help you with every stage of that. But this is the core part of it. Knowing 

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that the real enemy in these cases, child custody suit, is not your ex, it's the judge. 

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The sooner you realize that, the sooner things will turn around in your case. 

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If you're going and begging your enemy to give you something they don't want to give you 

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they may laugh in your face or they may act like they're going to give it to you and torture you 

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with the hope that they're going to give it to you. In the end, they're going to do whatever 

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the heck they want because they have the absolute power to do that unless you know how to stop them. 

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And the power that stops them is the first amendment. So take this Truth Bomb and put 

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it before your judge, and the other 8 Truth Bombs and put them before your judge. Get the motions 

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that we, the sample motions that we provide, get the education and knowledge we provide in our 

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membership site, so that you know how to put this before the judge in a way that they cannot deny, 

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and that they cannot fight. Or you just go along with the system, 

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beg the judge, and you get what you get --- whatever, it's just your kids right? 

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Your choice. You fight the corrupt system, knowing why the system's corrupt and how it's corrupt, 

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or you go along with the system and hope for the best. That's the only two choices you've got. 

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We like fighters. We're fighters. We fought and won. And we're to help other fighters 

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fight and win for their children. So good luck and I'll see you at the next Truth Bomb.