"Hold on to your hats. Common sense and constitutionalism have prevailed in the California judiciary. Last week, the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles declared that parents who homeschool don't need teaching credentials in order to educate their own children. Amazingly, the three judges were overturning their own February decision. ... What prompted this fit of judicial restraint? In a case the provoked outrage across the country, lawyers for the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services earlier this year invoked the state's truancy laws to place two homeschooled children into public schools after reports of abuse by their father. ... The families of the 166,000 children who are homeschooled in California, as well as Governor Arnold Schwarznegger, registered their protests. And thanks, at least in part to public pressure, the court agreed to rehear the case", my emphasis, Editorial at the WSJ, 18 August 2008.
I have long been an Andrew Jackson (AJ) fan, see my 24 December 2007 post. SF, welcome aboard.
Not all all, WSJ. Constitutionalism had nothing to do with it. We had a "Patrick Buchanan-Andrew Jackson moment". The Los Angeles court realized: California has a $17 billion 2008 budget deficit, 172,000 prisoners, prisons at 159% of capacity and if California's localities tried to enforce this ruling, there would be a "waiting list for jail". Getting into Harvard would be easier than a California prison. Further, Schwarznegger's opposition made the ruling unenforceable. Schwarznegger took a page from AJ's book, see my 26 January 2008 post. To avoid public ridicule and having its order ignored, the court retreated in the face of Pat Buchanan's advancing "peasants with pitchforks". Even the teacher's union couldn't save this ruling for its members. Legal "reasoning", whatever that is, had nothing to do with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment