Fourteen states, led by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, have sued the federal government to find out if the administration colluded with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) last fall to create a pretext for the Department of Justice to investigate parent protests at school board meetings as “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
The last couple years have marked a significant rise in parental concern over what’s happening in schools around the country. Everything from teaching critical race theory (CRT) and pushing policies that promote gender confusion, to questionable sex-ed curriculum choices, to masks and remote learning related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the parental angst boiled over into angry school board meetings.
The Mama Bear Movement has sparked a growing presence of concerned parents at school board meetings, which typically pits conservative, often Christian, parents against leftist and woke ideology of left-leaning school board members.
Things came to a head on October 4, 2021, when U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote a memo to the director of the FBI and various federal prosecutors around the country authorizing investigations into parent protests, equating them with harassment, intimidation and threats of violence.
The situation went from bad to worse, however, when it was revealed that the NSBA had written a letter to President Biden on September 29, 2021, at the request of Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona asking the federal government to invoke the PATRIOT Act and the federal hate crimes law to investigate parent protests as “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” AG Garland testified before the House Judiciary Committee on October 21, 2021, that the NSBA letter prompted his October 4 memo.
When all that became public, concerned state attorneys general decided to look into why the administration was colluding with the NSBA to provoke a federal investigation of parents.
On October 26, 2021, 17 states wrote a letter to AG Garland and President Biden protesting the administration’s targeting of concerned parents, and invoked the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to request all documents related to communications between the NSBA and the White House and other federal agencies, including the Department of Education.
After acknowledging receipt of the FOIA request, however, the Department of Justice has mostly ignored it ever since, even though FOIA requires the government to respond within 30 days to a document request. That failure to respond prompted the 14-state lawsuit against the federal government, asking the federal courts to order the government to respond to the request.
“More than thirty days (not including weekends and federal holidays) have lapsed since the Defendants acknowledged receipt of the States’ FOIA requests,” the federal lawsuit alleges. “The Defendants have failed to meet the statutory deadline for their response in the form of a determination to the FOIA request dated October 26, 2021. Because they have failed to respond within thirty (30) days (not including weekends and federal holidays) they are in violation of the FOIA.”
The public furor raised by the Garland memo quickly caused a backlash against the NSBA, which has since apologized for the White House letter to its member state organizations, many of whom were in the dark about the intent of the national organization to complain to the president about parents at school board meetings. Many of the state organizations have since disassociated from the NSBA in protest.
HD Editor’s Note: Why Is This News Biblically Relevant?
The controversial letter continues to garner widespread outrage since its release in the fall. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in October condemned the letter saying that the Biden Administration is “weaponizing the DOJ by using the FBI to pursue concerned parents and silence them through intimidation.”
Franklin Graham also spoke out against the likening of parents fighting for their children to “domestic terrorists” calling it an “ominous sign” meant to “silence parents with views the Left doesn’t agree with.”
“That’s how communism works. Anyone who speaks against communism or the goals of communism becomes the enemy. And we’re seeing this happen right in our own country,” Graham warned. “The Biden Administration, which bows to the radical progressive left, would like to silence parents who voice strong opinions against critical race theory and trans radicalism at school board meetings.”
“We cannot let the government take over the parenting of our children,” Graham underscored. “School boards and schools should educate, not indoctrinate.”
“If anti-woke, anti-socialism, anti-communism citizens like us do not speak up, get involved, and take a stand to preserve what we have in this country, it will disappear right before our eyes—in just one generation,” he concluded.
An increasing number of parents are recognizing that something is very wrong in the schools their children are attending. While a mass exodus of parents have opted to pull their children out of school, others decided to confront the school boards with their concerns that they might salvage the classrooms, demanding the educators to smarten up.
At these school board meetings across the country, vocal opposition has come against the politically driven and overtly sexualized curriculums.
The parents are not the only people speaking against the schoolboards. Teachers as well have expressed concern and/or resigned at such meetings because they believe the agenda-based curriculums are damaging their students.
Ken Ham, Founder and CEO of Answers In Genesis, in his recent article, “Who ‘Owns’ Children?” wrote:
Who “owns” the children—parents or the government? In our day and age, many involved in western government believe it’s the government that owns kids. Many believe they know what is best for children and think they should get to dictate what children learn—and parents are just in the way of accomplishing the state’s goals. And that shouldn’t surprise us because how you answer the question of “Who owns the children?” depends on your starting point and the worldview you build that’s based on that starting point.
If you reject God and his Word, then anything goes—there’s no absolute standard on which to base your thinking. In this view, children are just biological machines, the product of millions of years of evolution. They aren’t given to parents—they are just a “choice” parents made.
But when we start with God’s Word, we learn that children are a gift from God—given to parents. He has given parents authority over their children and the responsibility of training, teaching, and raising children. They are not just “choices,” nor are they the government’s responsibility—children are parent’s responsibility because God gave children to their parents to train them up for him.
