Parental Rights Amendment 2024

Protecting Parent-Child Bonds

The Family Unit

1. The most basic form of a protected private family unit is an individual parent and their minor child. The state may neither sever nor cross the boundaries of this family unit, except upon unfitness of the parent. Parent and child share a right to free and equal association with each other.

Parental Presumption

2. A parent is assumed to be fit until the state proves that either (a) the parent has exposed the minor child to clear and present danger as a result of the parent’s decisions (b) the parent is incapable of meeting the minimum basic needs of the child for a significantly prolonged period (c) the parent is unwilling to meet the minimum basic needs of the minor child (d) a parent knowingly and intelligently waives their parental rights.

(1) Fit parents are entrusted by nature or the State with determining the best interests of their minor child and must be assumed to be acting in their child’s best interests unless proven unfit.

(2) Each fit parent has the equal right and duty to direct and control their minor child’s education, to include educating the minor child through personal example, which arises through routine parenting of the child. The child has a right to receive education from each parent equally. These rights are among the penumbra of individual First Amendment rights.

(3) Fit parents hold equal rights and duties in the care, custody, control, and physical possession of the minor child. Any conflict between these rights must be resolved in as equal a manner as possible.

(4) Fit parents may entrust certain of these rights to others as they see fit without forfeiting their rights.

Natural Rights

3. The rights of natural (biological) parents are neither established nor granted by the State but are self-evident rights that shall be protected by the State and by this Amendment. The State may create legal parents where that creation does not unduly burden the rights of natural parents without their consent to the burden. Once established, except where specifically limited, legal parents are granted protection under this Amendment.

Child's Rights

4. Minor children have the right to be in the care, custody, control, and possession of their fit parents equally, and where no fit parents exist, to be in the care, custody, control, and possession of the State. All other rights with which the minor child is endowed but is incapable of exercising are to be held in trust by fit parents in the first instance and by the State only where no fit parent exists.

Health Safety Welfare

5. Nothing in this Amendment shall be construed as limiting the State from setting minimum, equally applicable, standards or regulation concerning the general health, safety, and welfare of its citizens. When rights between parents are in conflict and the State is asked to intervene, that intervention shall be the least detrimental to these rights. Where a valid question of harm to the child exists, the State may act to protect the child for the briefest time necessary to protect the child from that immediate harm.