Minnesota Usurps Mom’s Parental Rights Over Minor Son By Providing Transgender Services

The case detailed how these agencies usurped Calgaro’s parental rights over her minor son, providing him with transgender services and narcotic drugs. The youth was handled by the defendants as an emancipated minor despite there being no court action to that effect. Neither the school district, county, nor any of the medical agencies named in the lawsuit provided notice or hearing to Calgaro, prior to terminating her parental rights over her minor child.

In May 2017, District Judge Paul Magnuson dismissed Calgaro’s lawsuit. He admitted that the boy was not legally emancipated by a court order and agreed that Calgaro’s parental rights “remained intact.” Despite these facts, the judge decreed that the de facto emancipation of Calgaro’s minor son by the county, school and medical care providers did not constitute an infringement of constitutionally-protected parental rights.

Thomas More Society Special Counsel Erick Kaardal pointed out, “The U.S. Constitution says that parental rights of fit parents are fundamental rights, fit parents’ parental rights over unemancipated minors cannot be terminated without due process. U.S. District Court Judge Magnuson decided that the defendants did not emancipate Ms. Calgaro’s son because only a court order can do that. However, then, oddly, Judge Magnuson ruled that Ms. Calgaro’s claims were meritless because she did not name a specific policy of the county or school that caused the violation and deprivation of her parental rights.”

“There’s a real disconnect in the District Court decision where the mother’s parental rights are admitted but not honored. Then, at the same time, the District Court claims those agencies which are violating Calgaro’s rights are doing nothing wrong,” explained Kaardal. “The U.S. Court of Appeals needs to untangle this incompatible scenario by stating how the law of parental rights and emancipation work in an administrative state by addressing emancipation procedures in a way that protects parental rights, and by clarifying the law in a way that does not violate those rights.”

Read more here.

How Many Rights Does It Take To Overcome The Happiness Of Taking Home A Baby?

The linked article discusses surrogacy and whether surrogacy works toward our “common good.” Written by Matthew Eppinette, it is an important read. I think so many of our ethical debates come down to this idea of individualism vs the common good. More to it, I think that so many people are tied to the idea of getting what we want because we see only our unique situation…we see the need for our individualism to be advanced. And while there are strains of a “team mind-set,” we have largely organized our society to insure maximum individual happiness resulting in a stance that either ignores the common good or relegates it under the argument that if I am made happy and I don’t appear to be “hurting” anyone (this statement having little real definition) then I get what I want AND it IS good for society. In the case of abortion, for example, an argument along this line is as follows, I am not “hurting” anyone because a fetus is simply less human than a more biologically developed one…

In this article, Eppinette focuses on the idea that surrogate motherhood tears relationships. He begins by analyzing a recent HuffPost article titled, “I Chose To Be A Surrogate Mother. I Didnt Know It Would Break My Heart.” In that article, the author Lindsay, discusses the way surrogacy changed the way she loved – how she became more guarded and ultimately, how, for so many years after her surrogate pregnancies she carried feelings of deep, deep loss.

Eppinette then draws back from the personal case to look at the larger ethical picture which is on display.

Asking how or whether surrogate motherhood serves our shared human future raises questions of what it means to be human and what human relationships are for. What kind of people do we want to be? What meaning is there to procreation, to childhood, to parenthood? How does surrogacy support and nurture human relationships? How does it enhance childhood?

We have to look to the common good as the primary goal of society. This is basic catholic social teaching and it is true and good: “the human person cannot find fulfillment in himself, that is, apart from the fact that he exists with others and for others.” (The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church). Sometimes that may mean that what we want, our individualism, does not hold the upper hand in determining the good of the society.

Thomas More Society – Nonprofit Law Firm Dedicated to Fighting For the Family, Life, and Religious Liberty

The Thomas More Society is a national public interest law firm dedicated to the following pressing legal issues: life, religious liberty, and the family. Reading their website is an easy way to stay on top of current national cases affecting these important issues. Also, since the Thomas More Society is a nonprofit it relies on donations to stay afloat. There are several ways to donate, so please carefully consider helping out with the awesome work they are doing!

California Odious Speech Restiction on Pregnancy Centers Struck Down By Supreme Court…. But There’s More

California had passed a law trying to force pregnancy centers to advertise(post notices) advertising abortion. Other states were following suit, i.e. New Jersey. “The Court found that requiring such centers to post notices advertising abortion violates their First Amendment Free Speech rights. This is a very good result. However, few commentators have mentioned that the NIFLA ruling impacts attempts to ban so-called “conversion therapy.”

Laws which ban sexual orientation change efforts (“SOCE” for short) have increasingly entered the national conversation, most recently in California. Before California’s recent attempts to ban all forms of SOCE at any age, California already had such a law in place for minors. The law considered it “unprofessional conduct” to “seek to change sexual orientation” for a minor. Any counselor who violated the law faced professional discipline.
California’s more recent SOCE laws take an even more extreme position. These laws ban all therapy that aims to change, or even reduce, sexual attraction to the same sex. Therefore, a patient who wants SOCE therapy cannot receive that service without risk to the professional counselor.

Justice Thomas, writing for the court, seized the opportunity in this case to provide protections for professionals and by implication, those who seek out care from professionals…

“Professionals might have a host of good-faith disagreements, both with each other and with the government, on many topics in their respective fields.” He identifies doctors and nurses who disagree on the prevailing opinions on assisted suicide or medical marijuana as examples of good faith disagreements. So too are lawyers and marriage counselors who disagree on prenuptial agreements and divorces, and bankers and accountants who disagree on how to commit money to savings or tax reform. One would have to conclude that Justice Thomas’ intent is to protect all professionals from being regulated on matters of good faith disagreement.

This is a significant victory for free speech, and not only for pregnancy care centers. The “social justice” movement threatens many professionals in the exercise of their judgement and expertise. This Supreme Court ruling has created broad protections for a significant number of Americans who hold professional licenses. In doing so, the Court also reopened the seemingly settled question as to whether SOCE bans are constitutional. This is a welcome surprise from a case originally thought to be limited only to pregnancy centers.

Read the full article here.

Defending First Amendment Rights

“The First Amendment should not be a partisan issue or something only conservatives are willing to defend,” said Noel Sterett, the students’ legal counsel from the law firm Mauck & Baker, LLC in Chicago.

URBANA, Ill—… three University of Illinois student-journalists filed a federal lawsuit against university officials and an instructor for violating their constitutional rights to free press, free speech, and due process. The suit comes after the school punished the students for reporting on a campus anti-Trump rally co-organized by the Black Rose Anarchist group in November 2017. During the rally, Black Rose spokesman and university instructor, Tariq Khan, assaulted Joel Valdez and also went after student Blair Nelson who was video-recording the event. Co-plaintiff Andrew Minik, who was not at the event, reported on the incident for Campus Reform, a college news organization.

Rather than see the students as victims, however; the university issued them restraining orders to prevent them from reporting on Tariq Khan. Minik was also issued a restraining order even though he had only written about Khan’s assault. “I was told that if I wanted the ‘situation to improve’ that I should stop writing about Khan,” said Andrew Minik, a senior at the university.

With the unconstitutional restraining orders in place, Khan began using them as a sword to go after the students by reporting them for allegedly violating the orders whenever he or his wife was in the same place with one of them on campus. “No student should be under school surveillance and discipline for reporting on violent anarchist groups on campus,” said Joel Valdez.

The lawsuit was filed in the Central District Court of Illinois and seeks to vindicate the students’ constitutional rights as well as civil damages for Khan’s assault and destruction of Valdez’s cell phone. “The First Amendment should not be a partisan issue or something only conservatives are willing to defend,” said Noel Sterett, the students’ legal counsel from the law firm Mauck & Baker, LLC in Chicago.

Nelson, Valdez, and Minik have had their education disrupted as a result of having to deal with these restraining orders and defend against these false charges.

View the complaint here.