AUSTIN — The rights of Texas parents to raise their children without government interference would carry the same power as free speech if voters support an amendment that would write those protections into the state constitution.
Proposition 15 will appear on the ballot Nov. 4, one of 17 proposed constitutional amendments approved with broad support by the GOP-dominated Texas Legislature earlier this year. If passed, the amendment would make Texas the first state to add parental rights to its founding document, according to advocates.
Voters will decide this fall on 17 amendments to the state constitution. It’s important to understand how the amendments will affect day-to-day life in Texas before votes are cast. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 4, early voting opens Monday, Oct. 20.
The proposal would add the following language to the Texas Constitution:
“To enshrine truths that are deeply rooted in this nation’s history and traditions, the people of Texas hereby affirm that a parent has the responsibility to nurture and protect the parent’s child and the corresponding fundamental right to exercise care, custody, and control of the parent’s child, including the right to make decisions concerning the child’s upbringing.”
Political Points
The amendment wouldn’t supersede any state or federal laws in case laws or statutes against child abuse or other protections, attorneys who support the bill told lawmakers during committee hearings.
Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, who sponsored the legislation, told his fellow lawmakers the amendment was necessary to gather up the parental rights that have already been established in court cases and by the U.S. Supreme Court and codify them as permanently as other unalienable rights.
“It’s the same standard that’s been used to protect religious liberty, free speech, and gun rights for decades,” Hughes said. “No higher standard exists. Not using that language means that parental rights could be taken away based on a lower standard.”
Case law can change as judges and laws change, Hughes said. Adding parental rights to the state constitution can stop that uncertainty, he said.
“Who knows what judges might try to do in the future?” said Hughes, who chairs the powerful Senate State Affairs Committee. “The parents’ constitutional rights are scattered over a hundred years of case law, and these are cases many, many judges and attorneys may not be able to find. So the idea is to put all of this well-established law in one place in the constitution.”
Notable federal cases that have contributed to parental-rights precedents go as far back as 1923, when the U.S. Supreme Court established a parent’s right to guide their children’s education “suitable to their station in life.”
Two years later, the court cemented that right — and set a precedent for future cases — with another decision: “The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
Over the next century, several additional cases have added piecemeal to the Supreme Court construct of a parent’s bill of rights. In 1972, Wisconsin vs. Yoder established the right to raise your child in the religion of your choosing. Ten years later, the court ruled that a higher burden of proof would be needed for terminating parental rights. In the 2000 decision Troxel vs. Granville, the court connected parental rights to the 14th Amendment protections of privacy.
In 1979, the court’s majority opinion summed up its position this way in Parham vs. J.R., which concerned the rights of parents to institutionalize their children in state psychiatric hospitals — an issue courts and state law have wrestled with over the years, including in Texas:
“The statist notion that governmental power should supersede parental authority in all cases because some parents abuse and neglect children is repugnant to American tradition.”
State leaders in Republican-dominated Texas have been pushing for more laws like this for years. In 2019, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released a report defending parental rights against state interference at the request of a Republican House chairman. In 2023, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a package of legislation intended to strengthen parents’ voices in education, including giving them access to curriculum and library materials.
Proposition 15 was passed in the final days of the legislative session. Nobody testified against it in the Senate, and the House did not hold a public hearing before passing it in mid-May.
The amendment won unanimous support in the Senate but was opposed by two dozen Democrats in the House, many of them members of the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus who warned that laws spotlighting the rights of the parents often ignore the needs of children to be heard and protected by the government — often from their own parents.
“There is a movement to remove the emphasis and the focus on children’s rights and their psychological, emotional and social needs,” said Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson, who heads the caucus. “Where can we make sure that, as we’re advocating for parental rights, we’re also ensuring that a child’s voice is being heard … and for their rights in terms of them not just being the property or belonging to somebody but that they themselves are humans worthy of validation and independence?”
Andrew Brown of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation said upholding parents’ rights to make decisions for their children is the only way to help ensure they can properly protect them and raise them in a secure environment — precisely the thing critics say it needed.
“The rights of parents are deeply intertwined, derived from and inseparable from the care of the child,” Brown said. “In fact, as English philosopher John Locke said, the parent-child relationship is a form of natural government and the authority of the parent exists solely for the help, instruction and preservation of their offspring.”