Connecticut Democrats Target Homeschooling Parents in New Law

Democrats hate families having the freedom to educate their children at home instead of sending them to leftist schools that indoctrinate them for years along the liberal political and social agenda. Therefore, they continue to attack the parental freedom of homeschooling. In the blue state of Connecticut, a new law has brought a new set of regulations specifically targeting homeschooling parents in the state.

The bill HB 5468, titled “An Act Concerning The Provision Of Parent-managed Learning,” was sponsored by six Democrats of the State House and was staunchly opposed by Republican lawmakers in the state at every stage of its progress. But the Democrat majority in the State House and Senate outnumbered the Republican votes and the bill passed both chambers before it was signed into law by Connecticut’s Democrat Governor Ned Lamont on May 26.

As LifeSite News reported (May 29), the new legislation mandates background checks for all parents who apply to homeschool their children, making it appear that the regulation is meant only for preventing those parents from homeschooling who are abusive to their kids. However, the language of the legislation gives sweeping powers to the state to deny homeschooling applications of any parents on the basis of mere allegations of abuse whether or not substantiated. Even minor complaints of neglect toward a child can result in denying parents the right to homeschool their child. Any parents under investigation for alleged abuse or neglect are also not eligible for homeschooling under the new law even if the investigation hasn’t concluded and found them guilty.

The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) called it a terrible bill whose signing marks the first regression of homeschool freedom in the modern homeschool movement. The organization wrote on its X page that it would continue to pursue appropriate legal action against this legislation while working with allies in other states against such attacks on the parental freedom to homeschool their children.

Before HB 5468 was passed by the state legislature, a public hearing was held on March 3 at the state’s Legislative Office Building in Hartford. Concerned parents and other homeschooling advocates flooded the hearing in opposition to the bill that vindictively allows targeting parents who choose to take their kids out of the public school system in the state. A CT Insider news video showed a West Hartford resident calling the proposed legislation a witch hunt.

In April, Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) accepted a request filed by the National Home Education Legal Defense (NHELD) to conduct an independent investigation into Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families (DCF). The Connecticut Centinal (April 22) reported that the complaint followed “the recent rash of abuse, neglect, captivity, and deaths of children in the State, sparked by cases in Waterbury and New Britain.”

Sergeant News Network, a MAGA conservative X account, slammed the DCF in CT for failing to protect children while the state’s government was legislating to target parents for homeschooling their kids.