Eve’s death comes as Connecticut lawmakers consider a homeschool bill<\/a> that would require families to notify their school district before withdrawing children for homeschooling. Under the proposal, districts would then check parents against the state’s Department of Children and Families abuse and neglect registry before approving homeschooling.<\/p>\n Connecticut is one of 12 states with no homeschooling regulations. The current bill — spurred in part by the death last year of<\/a> Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres-Garcia, an 11-year-old from Connecticut whose cause of death was ruled as child abuse and starvation — is being condemned by some as “unwarranted surveillance<\/a>,” “repugnant to American tradition<\/a>” and an attack on the “God-given authority entrusted to parents<\/a>.”<\/p>\n Why do some homeschoolers describe a move from no regulation to basic safety oversight as “unwarranted surveillance”? The answer is rooted in the history of homeschooling in the United States. For much of the 20th century, homeschooling was illegal; today it is legal in all 50 states, largely due to the advocacy of the Home School Legal Defense Association. <\/p>\n The only national organization focused on homeschooling, HSLDA wields outsized influence over state and federal policy<\/a>, largely through its founder, Michael Farris. After creating the HSLDA, Farris founded Patrick Henry College and ParentalRights.org<\/a> and became CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom<\/a>. Through Farris, the HSLDA has access to incredible power in Washington, D.C., and uses it. Last year, Concerned Women for America, another conservative Christian group, spread a misleading call to action<\/a> against Illinois’ Homeschool Act, likely connected to Farris’ role as the organization’s chief counsel and lobbyist in the 1980s. <\/p>\n The HSLDA has always been a Christian nationalist enterprise. Beneath its appeals to liberty, homeschooling is a useful tool for authoritarianism<\/a>. U.S. homeschool laws are built on a foundation of parental rights<\/a> because the HSLDA’s theological and political framework treats children as parental property<\/a>. <\/p>\n In homeschooling’s early years, most homeschool families aligned with the HSLDA, which embraced<\/a> fundamentalist Christian views and trained parents to fear government authorities<\/a>, leaving some homeschool alumni from my generation with lasting anxiety attacks at the sound of a ringing doorbell.<\/p>\n While first-generation homeschool alumni recognize HSLDA’s exclusionary tactics<\/a>, new homeschoolers are often unaware that HSLDA’s advocacy is a key reason homeschoolers can be seen as fanatical and isolationist. While many homeschooling families still cite religious reasons for homeschooling<\/a>, the homeschool community has grown more diverse<\/a> and less likely to interact with the HSLDA unless there’s a fight in their state.<\/p>\n The Christian nationalist influences in the HSLDA aren’t confined to Farris — who tried to overturn the election Donald Trump<\/a> lost in 2020 — though many of his organizations are listed as contributors or advisers for Project 2025<\/a>. Homeschooling families who lobby for fewer regulations in their states are often accompanied by Will Estrada, HSLDA’s senior counsel and Project 2025 contributor<\/a>. <\/p>\n Project 2025 is the HSLDA’s most prominent side project, but Farris and the HSLDA have been powerful voices<\/a> against the U.S. ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child<\/a>. Their goal is a regulation-free context in which parents have the liberty to educate their children as they wish, even if that “education” looks like physical and sexual abuse, educational neglect and other crimes<\/a>. <\/p>\n This belief in absolute parental authority helps explain the HSLDA’s reversal on a homeschooling bill<\/a> in West Virginia last year. The bill initially rolled back several state protections for homeschooled children, and the HSLDA supported it. That support evaporated after lawmakers added a child abuse exception<\/a>, prompted by the 2018 death of 8-year-old Raylee Browning<\/a>, who was abused and neglected by caregivers who had withdrawn her from school under the guise of homeschooling, after her teachers had contacted Child Protective Services.<\/p>\n The revised bill<\/a> would have barred caregivers under active investigation for child abuse or neglect from homeschooling in West Virginia. The HSLDA swiftly withdrew its support<\/a>, reaffirming that parents should be free to homeschool under all circumstances, even while under active investigation for child abuse<\/a>.<\/p>\n The HSLDA may seem like a powerful ally to regulation-averse parents. The HSLDA’s parental-rights framework for homeschooling legislation has been successful<\/a>, and they can tap wealthy conservative advocacy groups like Americans for Prosperity<\/a> when homeschooling lobbyists need to pay for buses to their state capitols. But those resources come with a hidden cost. <\/p>\n People of color who homeschool hold legitimate concerns about the child welfare system, and HSLDA has fanned those flames to the point where a Black homeschooling mom went on television last year and equated the Illinois Homeschool Act with slavery<\/a>. But unfortunately, any short-term gains granted by the HSLDA will be undercut by the Christian nationalist goal of creating a society where white Christians rule over everyone else. An exposé of Colin and Nancy Campbell’s<\/a> Liberian adoption scheme illuminates how Black children fare in a world run by Christian nationalist homeschoolers. <\/p>\n The HSLDA has spent four decades amassing power; it will be difficult to divest from its Christian nationalist framework. But for the sake of our children and our country, we must. We must look to our BIPOC homeschooling neighbors who ground homeschooling in shared responsibility and community, rather than an isolated nuclear-family model. <\/p>\n Homeschooling is not an individual liberty; every family’s education choices impact the wider community. The HSLDA knows this and invests in homeschooling to bend the trajectory of our society toward Christian nationalism. As scholar Keri Ladner points out in her book, “American Dominion: The Rise and Radicalization of a New Christendom<\/a>,” “homeschooling itself became a weapon against the federal government, aiming to replace secular values with biblical ones.”<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/webRNS-Michael-Farris1.jpg\")
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