By now, you’ve probably heard about the February 28 decision of the California Court of Appeal, which effectively ruled that homeschooling is illegal in California unless conducted by a credentialed teacher and that parents have no constitutional right to homeschool.

It even made the ABC evening news (USA), which intrigued us as the liberal media seldom recognizes the inroads and accomplishments that homeschoolers have made. Surprisingly, there was no negative spin to the story, and it seemed to be a fairly balanced report with statements from both sides of the issues.

The public school official interviewed claims that in order to be able to teach your own child effectively, you would need to be a credentialed teacher, which according to the ABC news story, would cost about $10,000. Do you feel your pockets being picked already?

This would effectively eliminate the option of homeschooling for the average family that doesn’t have a spare $10,000 lying around, or the time to take all the classes it would require. It also implies that your children would not be getting a good education unless you were credentialed.

That’s interesting, since home schoolers consistently outperform their public school counterparts, sometimes by a large margin. They also don’t have to listen to the blather about evolution, gay rights, sex ed, multiculturalism, humanism and the like that they would receive from the public schools. Could there be a connection here somewhere?

We note the parallelism between this court’s decision and some other notorious court decisions of late, such as legalizing gay marriage. In these cases, polls show that the public opinion is usually the exact opposite of the court decisions that are rendered.

In other words, the liberal courts know that if they put their ideas up for a vote, they would quickly get shot down. So instead, they legislate from the bench and ram these unpopular and illogical decisions down our throats whether we like it or not.

If the public doesn’t like it, it’s tough. The liberal courts know what’s best for us, so them being so much wiser, they need to give us the benefit of their superior knowledge. So we can trust them to do what’s “best” for us since they know what we need better than we (or the Bible) do. Yeah, right.

Fortunately, there have been some positive developments in the California homeschooling case. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell came to the defense of homeschool families. “The California Department of Education policy will not change in any way as a result of this ruling. Parents still have the right to homeschool in this state,” he said.

“O’Connell has it right,” said Michael Farris, Chairman of Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). “But the court decision must still be overturned before homeschool freedom can be restored in California.”

O’Connell’s statement is helpful, but the courts will undoubtedly take the position that their determination of the meaning of state law is final even though they should give serious deference to the position of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Even California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says the court ruling that says parents must have a teaching credential to home school their kids is ‘outrageous’.

The governor issued the following stern statement regarding the recent ruling by the state’s Second District Court of Appeals:  

“Every California child deserves a quality education and parents should have the right to decide what’s best for their children. Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children’s education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts and if the courts don’t protect parents’ rights then, as elected officials, we will.”

HSLDA will be pursuing several legal options, including seeking review by the California Supreme Court and petitioning the same court to depublish the opinion in order to return California to being a state where a family can legally homeschool in California without fear.

“We have just started the legal battle to restore homeschool freedom in California,” said Farris.

In order to show how many families across America support homeschool freedom in California, HSLDA is asking you to sign a petition requesting that the California Supreme Court depublish the opinion In re Rachel L. If you have not already done so, please sign the petition today and forward their website, www.hslda.org, to those who support homeschool freedom.