Parental rights bill targets funding of state child welfare programs

The measure would bar federally funded state child welfare systems from removing children from fit parents simply because the parents affirm their child’s biological sex.

Independent Women Senior Legal Counsel Beth Parlato said Congress provides substantial funding for state child welfare programs.

“The bill says that if the state is going to accept those federal funds, which they do, we all know they do, then they cannot punish parents for exercising their rights under the Constitution, like their parental rights,” Parlato told The Center Square.

In addition to federal funding consequences, the legislation includes a private right of action for violations.

Parlato said children in New York were taken away from their parents if they did not affirm the child’s self-identity.

“The Supreme Court has said for decades and decades, for generations, that parents have the right to raise their children in their upbringing as they see fit, and the government should not interfere,” Parlato said.

Miller’s legislation would provide that foster and adoptive families cannot be denied placement solely because they affirm a child’s biological sex. It also would amend the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act to prevent states from wrongfully asserting custody over a child.

“The Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act defends the constitutional rights of mothers and fathers and stops bureaucrats from using taxpayer-funded child-welfare systems to tear children away from loving families,” Miller said in a statement.

The campaign for Miller’s November opponent, Jennifer Todd, did not immediately respond to The Center Square’s request for comment.

Parlato said raising a child born male as a boy or a child born female as a girl is not child abuse.

“And what was happening across the country, it's not just in one state or two states, it really was in several states, that this was being classified as child abuse."

Parlato said the bill may not gain bipartisan support because it implicates the gender ideology movement.