DFL opposes parents’ rights bill advancing in House

Author of the legislation wants to protect parents’ rights and ‘give them a seat at the table.’

By Hank Long, Alpha News – February 16, 2025

As school districts across Minnesota increase the health care resources available to students in buildings during the school day, one lawmaker is pushing to ensure that parents are still the decision-makers for their children in those settings.

Rep. Dawn Gillman, R-Dassel, introduced her “Parent’s Bill of Rights” legislation last week, saying it will provide a safeguard for children so that their parents remain at the forefront of any health care services provided while they are in the care of the state during the school day.

“We need to empower parents with resources to guide their children’s upbringing and give them the seat at the table,” said Gillman, a second-term lawmaker who previously founded “Let Them Play Minnesota,” an organization that advocated for children to return to sports during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This bill specifically names the rights to direct education—whether it be public, charter, private, or home education,” Gillman explained. “Additionally, the bill directs the upbringing, moral and religious training of a child, and have informed consent in health care decisions. Transparency and accountability are pillars of good government, and this bill ensures you’re doing just that. This bill does not create new rights but rather recognizes the rights parents already have.”

The House Children and Families Committee approved HF22 on a divided voice vote Wednesday, with a number of Democrats criticizing the proposed Parent’s Bill of Rights. To date, 19 House Republicans, and zero Democrats, have signed on as co-authors of the bill. It’s now headed for a hearing in the House Education Policy Committee.

One Democrat who strongly opposes the Parent’s Bill of Rights as it’s currently worded is Rep. Kim Hicks, DFL-Rochester. She said the bill provides too much power to parents over children in the arena of mental health services.

“The way this is written, especially when it looks at the mental health stuff, I am really concerned that a child, if they knew their parents could tap into their mental health record when they were 16, 17, even 15, may not talk to a therapist,” Hicks told her colleagues in the hearing on Wednesday. “To be clear, I would never tap into my kids’ mental health records, regardless of whether there was a law or not, because I actually believe they are autonomous human beings who have a right to privacy.”

But advocates for parents’ rights in public schools said that the rapidly-developing health care services that are provided for students in some districts increase the potential for “well-intentioned, but misguided staff” cutting parents out of the health care decisions of their children.

“Adopting full-service community programs and dispensing mental health and physical health care during school hours invites conflicts, data privacy violations and conflation of roles,” said Cristine Trooien of the Minnesota Parents Alliance.

“Minnesota would be wise to reject the blurring of lines between education and health care with the introduction of these ever growing wrap-around services and we need only to look to states like California and Maine where these programs were rapidly implemented,” Trooien told legislators in her testimony supporting the Parent’s Bill of Rights legislation.

“[This bill] establishes a foundational understanding and guiding principles for policymakers as they navigate decisions about how or whether these types of initiatives move forward. It’s essential that steps are taken this session to safeguard our children and the rights of Minnesota parents to protect and advocate for them to the fullest extent.”

Meg Luger Nikolai, an attorney for Education Minnesota, testified against the bill and said it will make the job of educators more difficult.

“This bill makes no distinction between the act of teaching and whatever a reader may conceive of as interference with parental rights,” she said. “This bill could subject members of my organization to summary termination and other discipline merely for doing their jobs.”

Parent’s Bill of Rights summarized

The language of HF22 lists one dozen tenets of parents’ rights the state would protect with respect to the education and upbringing of their children, including:

• directing a child’s education;
• accessing, reviewing and overseeing the privacy of a child’s school records;
• directing a child’s upbringing;
• directing a child’s moral and religious training;
• having informed consent when making health care decisions for a child, including the choice of a health care team for a child;
• accessing and reviewing a child’s medical records and physical samples;
• consenting in writing to any physical or mental health examinations of a child in advance, unless it’s a life-threatening emergency;
• consenting in writing to any medical interventions for a child in advance, unless it’s a life-threatening emergency;
• consenting in writing to any biometric scan of a child;
• consenting in writing before any record of a child’s blood or DNA is made, shared, or stored, unless required by law or pursuant to a court order;
• consenting in writing before the state or any political subdivision makes a voice or video recording of a child;
• being promptly notified if any governmental entity or institution suspects that a criminal offense has been committed against a minor by someone other than a parent.

The bill also states that “any attempt to encourage or coerce a minor child to withhold information” parents “shall be grounds for discipline.”

PHOTO: Rep. Dawn Gillman presents her “Parent’s Bill of Rights” during a committee hearing Wednesday.  |Minnesota House Info/YouTube