From Idaho to Texas to Florida: The Harm of Sweeping ‘Parental Rights’ Laws
Texas’s SB 12 proves what child advocates have long warned: sweeping parental control laws deny kids even the most basic protections.
The Band-Aid and Broken Arm Problem
In Texas, if a student skins their knee or elbow on the playground, their teacher, school nurse, or coach would normally clean the scrape, put on a Band-Aid, and send the child back to class. Quick, painless, helpful, and routine.
But no longer.
Due to Senate Bill 12 (SB 12) – the state’s new so-called “parental rights” law – providing basic “first aid” is now illegal without obtaining parental consent.
That isn’t an exaggeration. The text of SB 12 is clear: schools cannot provide medical, psychiatric, and psychological treatment to a parent’s child without consent, unless it is “necessary to further a compelling state interest, such as providing life-saving care to a child….”
Short of saving the life of a child, Texas schools must now withhold care unless they have parental consent.
The Texas Education Agency (TEA), tasked with implementing the law, has prepared a draft rule to comply with SB 12 and details the following services that are now illegal without parental consent:
These would include, but not be limited to, school counseling services; nutrition health and education beyond what is taught through grade-level or course instruction; physical health screenings such as scoliosis and vision; first aid; management of chronic illnesses; mental health screenings; social skills training; stress management; wellness promotion and education; medication administration; opportunities for physical activity; emotional regulation activities; substance abuse prevention; suicide prevention; crisis prevention training; and other services offered in alignment with decisions made by the local school health advisory council.
As a result, school districts and individual schools across the Lone Star State are scrambling to collect signed forms from the parents of more than 5.5 million public school children. School staff are being warned: no consent, no Band-Aid, no vision test, no access to a school counselor, no care for a broken arm, and no “opportunities for physical activity.”
For years, we have been warning about this type of “parental rights” language that keeps appearing word-for-word in bills across the country, as being promoted by groups like Moms for Liberty, ParentalRights.org, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and the Foundation for Government Accountability (see Appendix below).
The Authors Backpedal
Ironically, the authors of SB 12 – State Sen. Brandon Creighton and State Rep. Jeff Leach – are now pleading with TEA to reinterpret the law they wrote. They are now urging “common sense” so that children could at least receive bandages, ice packs, and other basic care.
In a public letter to the TEA commissioner, they essentially pleaded with the agency to read past the plain language they themselves drafted.
They write:
Specifically, we are concerned of some reports that indicate school districts are withholding band-aids and ice packs for students with minor scratches and scrapes. Clearly, there is a distinct difference from providing a student with an ice pack, as opposed to other injuries that would necessitate medical attention, including the dispensing of medication that should require consent on file before providing it to a child.
But it wasn’t TEA, school districts, school nurses, school counselors, or coaches who drafted the sweeping language. Sen. Creighton and Rep. Leach did, the Texas Legislature voted for it, and Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law. If they had meant to limit the law to prescription medication, they could have written that. Instead, they wrote a law that prohibits all care short of “providing life-saving care to a child.”
At legislative hearings on the bill, most voices spoke out against the bill and there were many voices, particularly from school nurses, who explained the practical negative consequences the bill would create. They were ignored. Schools are now caught in the middle, and it is the children who are paying the price for legislative negligence.
Clues were available via a simple Google search about the exact problems that Texas is now experiencing with their own “parental rights” bill from states like Tennessee a year ago.
If a child experiences anything from skinning their knee or breaking their arm on the playground, school officials have to track down the student record and consent form before they can do anything. If the consent form can’t be found or was not signed, Texas law prohibits care until school personnel can reach the parents and consent is obtained.
While the legislators who wrote the law are now expressing concern that their bill prevents the delivery of “first aid,” their letter raises the question of whether they are okay with denying care to prevent imminent or irreparable harm, such as a high fever, a concussion, a broken arm, or if a student that has threated physical harm to oneself?
This is not “common sense” – it is cruelty to children by statute.
What These Parental Consent Laws Really Do
The problem here, as with similar bills being passed across this country, is that the language is sweeping, absolute, and onerous. It does not distinguish between giving children medication and putting a Band-Aid on a scraped knee or helping a child with a broken finger or arm. It does not leave room for “routine care” or other troubling medical situations. It does not recognize the difference between an ice pack or a bandage for a sprain and surgery in a hospital. Unless it is literally life-saving, the law says schools must stop and wait or look for a signed consent form.
Affirming this problem, when the Texas Education Agency (TEA) issued its implementation guidance, it confirmed what the statute plainly says: school nurses, athletic trainers, and counselors cannot provide first aid or other routine health services without prior consent on file.
That has set off a bureaucratic scramble across Texas. Every public school – serving more than 5.5 million children – must now obtain and track signed forms (one of an array of other consent forms that schools must now collect).
The result is predictable:
Children who don’t return forms in time will be denied care.
Nurses and trainers are placed in legal jeopardy if they follow their instincts and training to care for children.
Schools are required to divert time and taxpayer resources away from teaching to chase down consent form signatures and managing paperwork.
Instead of helping children, schools are being forced to issue millions of forms and repeatedly beg parents to return the forms and then to collect, house, and constantly check these forms throughout the year at incredible time and expense to taxpayers.
And even once the forms are collected:
If a school official cannot immediately access or check for the student’s parental consent form, the default will be for either the denial or delay of care to a child.
This is a tragedy.
Even the bill’s authors now admit this creates absurd outcomes.
What About Abused Children?
Perhaps the most chilling impact of these laws is what they mean for children who are abused at home.
These bills effectively give abusive parents veto power over whether their child can receive medical attention or counseling. Consider the chilling reality: a child who comes to school with bruises or injuries inflicted by a parent may now be legally barred from receiving care without that very parent’s consent. Instead of serving as a safe haven, the school nurse or counselor’s office becomes yet another locked door.
Hospitals may not be a refuge either. At a hearing in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee earlier this year, Dr. Eithan Haim testified that Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) never “actually protected children” in cases he witnessed involving “dozens of children who suffered unfathomable abuse such as intentional starvation, cigarette burns, finger amputations, etc.” who were hospitalized at Texas Children’s Hospital.
As Yale Law School’s Samantha Godwin warns:
When evaluating the extent of parents’ legal rights, we should not merely consider how ideal parents exercise their power to provide the effective care and guidance children need. The extent of what the law enables imperfect parents to do to their children must also be taken into account. The issue is not only what role we hope that parents play in their children’s lives, but how the powers actually granted might be used and abused for better or worse. Thinking only in terms of how the best parents conduct themselves is a mistake; it is also necessary to account for what the worst parents can get away with.[1]
And let’s be clear, child abusers will not be signing consent forms.
This Isn’t Just Texas – It’s a National Pattern
What’s happening in Texas is not an isolated misstep. SB 12 is part of a wave of “parental rights” laws sweeping across the country, all drafted with similarly broad and sweeping language. They share the same fatal flaw: in trying to maximize parental control, they minimize children’s health, safety, and rights.
Take Idaho, which passed its own “Parents’ Rights in Medical Decision-Making Act” (SB 1329). The law requires parental consent for virtually all health services, with only a narrow exception for emergencies necessary to prevent death or “irreparable harm.” The result? Districts are requiring parental permission slips for first aid, over-the-counter medication, and mental health check-ins. Counselors and crisis workers report that the law is already creating barriers to helping students in need, including youth experiencing suicidal thoughts.
The Washington Post reported on the case of a teenage child who was pregnant and needed medical care but waited hours before health care staff could find a parent or guardian to provide consent to provide health care services. The pregnant patient needed parental consent to get her own medical care, while at the same time placing her in charge of medical care for her baby.
Reporter Karin Brulliard cited additional tragic and disturbing stories, such as:
A 17-year-old with a hornet allergy was stung but was unable to get a new EpiPen from his primary-care physician or urgent care because his parents were traveling; by the time he arrived at a hospital, he was in anaphylaxis.”
“A 16-year-old was treated at an emergency department for a suicide attempt, but the parents refused to allow follow-up.”
Brulliard explains:
Three months after its implementation, they contend it is hindering adolescents’ ability to access counseling, limiting evidence collection in sexual assault cases and causing schools to seek parental permission to treat scrapes with ice packs and Band-Aids.
Even crisis hotlines in Idaho are being forced to seek parental consent before helping youth.
These examples show a clear national pattern: when legislators use absolutist language to score political points, schools and agencies are forced into rigid compliance. If parental rights is the goal, children’s lives are exclusively dictated by those decisions or non-decisions.
And so the realities of children’s lives – scraped knees, headaches, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, and even child abuse – become entangled in red tape and are sometimes left without recourse.
This is why we have been warning, again and again, that the danger isn’t hypothetical. The problem is structural. When laws are written without nuance, children suffer the consequences.
Children Have Fundamental Rights Too
Think about what SB 12 really says to high school students in Texas: you do not have a say in whether you can seek care for your own body at school. If you cut your finger, you can’t get it cleaned and bandaged without a parent’s permission. If you’re having a panic attack, the school counselor has to stand by until a form is located. If you’re being abused at home, the law hands your abuser veto power over whether you get care.
This idea that parents’ control should be absolute runs directly against a long line of court decisions that affirm children are not just extensions of their parents. children are rights-bearing individuals in their own right. Their voices and health matter.
And the deeper truth is that children are not property. They are not possessions for adults to control, but people whose safety, dignity, and autonomy are entitled to recognition under the law. SB 12 and similar “parental rights” laws ignore this fundamental principle. Of course parents matter, but these laws elevate parental power above all else, even when it means putting children directly in harm’s way.
By reducing kids to dependents with no say in their own care, these laws erase decades of legal recognition that children’s welfare cannot be subordinated to absolute parental control. It isn’t just bad policy – it’s an assault on some children’s health, safety, and well-being.
Laws like SB 12 are often debated in abstract terms – “parental rights,” “school authority,” and “government overreach.” But in the real world, the impact is painfully concrete.
And it raises a troubling question: how far does “parental rights” extend? Could a parent override a coach’s decision to keep a child off the court after a suspected concussion? Does parental authority trump the judgment of trained coaches, trainers, and medical professionals who are responsible for keeping kids safe?
SB 12 points us down that dangerous path. It subordinates children’s health and well-being to unchecked parental veto power. This is not just bad policy – it is an assault on children’s constitutional dignity.
What Lawmakers Must Do Now
The truth is that SB 12 cannot be fixed with a letter or a tweak. Its very structure – sweeping language that requires parental consent for any health service short of life-saving intervention – creates the harms we are now seeing in Texas, Florida, Idaho, Tennessee and other schools.
This is also why the federal “Families’ Rights and Responsibilities Act” (S. 204/H.R. 650) by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Rep. Virginia Foxx should be rejected.
The first and best solution is simple: repeal SB 12 and reject other sweeping “parental rights” laws. Leave these issues up to local districts and schools: where parents, teachers, and students can work together to address issues and not be forced into rigid compliance with sweeping state mandates.
If lawmakers believe there are specific areas of care where parental consent should be strengthened, then those laws should be narrowly written to address those situations directly. What children cannot afford is legislation drafted in broad strokes that sweeps in everything from Band-Aids to counseling to broken arms to vision tests, leaving schools overwhelmed with paperwork and kids unprotected.
This is not just about first aid at school. As I have argued in past blogs, sweeping “parental rights” laws can be used to justify far more dangerous outcomes:
They imply that parents could deny children access to cancer treatment or other critical medical interventions short of life-saving emergencies.
They risk enabling parents to pursue harmful or pseudoscientific “treatments” – from bleach to other toxic substances – without accountability until the child’s life is in immediate danger.
They empower abusive parents to continue exercising authority over the very children they have harmed.
These are some of the flaws of these “parental rights” laws. They assume that all parents will act in their child’s best interest. But as Godwin reminds us, it is not the ideal parents we need to worry about – it is the worst ones. And those are precisely the parents these sweeping “parental rights” laws empower.
If repeal proves politically difficult, then lawmakers must at least make urgent repairs to protect children:
Shift to opt-out, not opt-in. Assume parental consent for basic care unless a parent explicitly declines. This honors parental choice without leaving kids untreated.
Protect confidential adolescent care. Ensure that students can access counseling and other sensitive services consistent with constitutional precedent and medical best practices.
Adopt a “best interests of the child” standard. When parental control and a child’s health or safety are at odds, the child’s welfare must take precedence.
Provide safe harbor for school staff. Nurses, counselors, and athletic trainers should be shielded from liability when acting in good faith to provide needed care.
Make equity a priority. Consent processes must be accessible in families’ home languages and formats, so children are not denied services because their parents face barriers to participation.
Fund compliance. If lawmakers insist on new administrative burdens, the state should bear the cost – not teachers, nurses, schools, or students.
The clearest path forward is repeal. But if legislators will not take that step, then they must, at the very least, fix the worst flaws of SB 12 and similar laws. Because children deserve more than political talking points. They deserve safety, care, and protection from abuse.
Policymakers Have Been Warned
When we warned about the dangers of sweeping “parental rights” bills, we were told not to worry. We were told that common sense would prevail, that no one intended to stop a school nurse from handing out a Band-Aid or a counselor from comforting a child in crisis. We were told that our concerns were overblown.
But today in Texas, those warnings have become reality. SB 12 has forced schools into an absurd and dangerous posture: no care without a form, unless a child is literally at risk of death. Districts are scrambling, nurses and counselors are handcuffed, and children are left vulnerable. And the very lawmakers who pushed the bill are now reduced to writing letters begging agencies to reinterpret their own unambiguous language.
This is exactly what has been predicted, and the stakes for children are too high to ignore that truth here. The harms we warned about were not theoretical: they were inevitable.
What matters now is action.
Lawmakers should repeal SB 12 and other sweeping “parental rights” laws, or at the very least, repair them before a preventable tragedy forces their hand. Parents must demand that their children’s health and safety come first. Advocates must continue to shine a light on the real human consequences of these laws.
Children have fundamental rights, even if their voices are too often drowned out in political battles fought in their name but without their perspective. That is why we must insist – loudly and persistently – that children’s rights, health, and safety come before political slogans.
Because at the end of the day, this is not about ideology. It is about a child with a scraped knee, a jammed finger, a panic attack, or signs of physical or mental abuse from home. It is about whether we choose bureaucracy and absolutism over compassion and common sense. It is about whether we recognize children as people, with dignity and rights of their own.
And it is about whether lawmakers finally hear the message we’ve been repeating all along: kids can’t wait.
Appendix: Prior Warnings and References
For those working on the frontlines of child advocacy – whether at the statehouse, in schools, or in communities – it is important to remember that none of the harms unfolding under SB 12 or other “parental rights” laws were unforeseen. Advocates for children have been sounding the alarm about sweeping “parental rights” legislation for years. Below are references to our work that document many of those warnings:
Blogs and Commentary on “Parental Rights” Laws
How a “Parental Rights” Bill Threatens the Health, Education, and Safety of Children
Centering Children: Challenging the Politics of “Parental Rights”
Childism Under the Guise of “Parental Rights” Is Detrimental to Children
Testifying for Children Before a House Judiciary Committee Hearing on “Parental Rights”
Gov. DeSantis Should Veto Florida’s Tragically Flawed So-Called Parents’ Bill of Rights
Advocacy Letters and Statements
These references are intended not to say “we told you so,” but to serve as resources for state and local advocates who may now be confronting similar legislation in their own communities.
The lesson is clear: we have seen this tragedy before, and we know where these laws lead. The challenge is making sure lawmakers listen before children pay the price.
ENDNOTE
[1] Godwin, S. (2015). Against Parental Rights. Columbia Human Rights Law Review, 47(1), 1-83.
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