A bill to place egregious regulations on homeschooling families in Illinois is dead after the 2025 legislative session ended on Sunday June 1.
Parents would have faced automatic criminal truancy penalties if they failed to file annual notice on time under the original draft of the bill, and the department of education would have been granted immense regulatory power bypassing the legislative process. But the homeschool community organized effectively against the bill, setting records at the statehouse and generating headlines around the globe, and H.B. 2827 never made it out of the Illinois House.
This incredible victory is the result of homeschooling families working together with Illinois state organizations, Illinois legislators from both parties, and HSLDA and other national allies to stand for homeschool freedom.
H.B. 2827 was the most authoritarian bill proposed in the country in the last three decades. In recent memory, no state has even attempted to put automatic criminal penalties on homeschool families who do not file a piece of paperwork, as the original bill stipulated, or automatically refer them to a state attorney for prosecution, as in the amended bill.
The victory is especially significant because it happened on the anniversary of a landmark Supreme Court decision in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. The US Supreme Court unanimously declared in the ruling on June 1, 1925: “The child is not the mere creature of the state.”
It’s fitting that the Illinois bill, which would have attempted to place home education children in Illinois under the power and control of the State, officially died one hundred years later.
We will have battles again in future legislative years. We expect those who support the Illinois bill will make another attempt to regulate homeschooling in Illinois next year. But for now, we can celebrate this incredible victory.
You can rest assured that HSLDA will stand with you and the home education community and our allies in Illinois every step of the way. To read the various versions of H.B. 2827, and find out more about what this draconian bill would have done to families in Illinois, visit hslda.org/hb2827.