A new religion and custody case

[Douglas Laycock]

  Suppose the order simply said "The choice of school is for the
parents, not for the court.  These parents can't agree, so the court
is forced to decide which parent gets to exercise the parental right
to choose.  The court finds that it is in the best interest of the
child for the mother to have custody and for the mother to choose the
child's school." 

  The two sentences of preamble pretty much just describe what courts
have to do in every custody case.  Hard to find a constitutional
objection to that, but same result. 

  Quoting David Cruz <dcruz at law.usc.edu>:

> Just looking at the text, it's not clear to me that it would be 
> violated by a state's allowing a custodial parent to send a kid to
a
> school of that parent's choosing.  A noncustodial parent would not 
> get her way (or not during the time the other parent had custody 
> under a joint arrangement), but she wouldn't be "sending" the kid
to
> an objectionable school.  (A noncustodial parent would have a 
> textually better argument if she were forced to pay some of the 
> tuition for an objectionable school the other parent sends the kid 
> to.)
>
> David B. Cruz
> Professor of Law
> University of Southern California Gould School of Law
> Los Angeles, CA 90089-0071
> U.S.A.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ed Brayton <stcynic at crystalauto.com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2008 3:27 PM
> To: 'Law & Religion issues for Law Academics'
<religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu>
> Subject: A new religion and custody case
>
> With a bit of a spin. A father in Kentucky is arguing in court that
a
> custody ruling requiring that his son continue to go to Catholic
school is
> unconstitutional under the KY constitution. Section 5 of that
constitution
> says:
>
>
>
> "Nor shall any man be compelled to send his child to any school to
which he
> may be conscientiously opposed."
>
>
>
> Very interesting case. The mother apparently wants the child to go
to
> Catholic school, so it would seem that the constitutional argument
would
> apply to both sides.
>
>
>
> http://www.wlky.com/news/14981101/detail.html[1]
>
>
>
> Ed Brayton
>
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>

Douglas Laycock
Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
625 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1215
  734-647-9713

Links:
------
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