Latest Updates
Mar. 3 | Amended in the Children and Families Committee
H.B. 2426 was prefiled on December 15, 2025, by Representative Ben Keathley. It was heard by the House Children and Families Committee on February 24. As written, the bill failed to provide some crucial protection for our Fourth Amendment rights.
HSLDA worked with Families for Home Education to request amendments to the bill that would fix these issues. On March 3, H.B. 2426 was amended in the Children and Families Committee to fix these oversights.
Now, HSLDA fully supports H.B. 2426. There is another parental rights bill working its way through the legislature right now, Senate Bill 948. Because of several flaws in that bill, HSLDA is not asking families to support it.
Please call or email your representative and urge them to vote in support of H.B. 2426.
Summary of H.B. 2426
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Troxel v. Granville decision in 2000, there was widespread confusion in the courts about how parental rights should be protected. In many cases, regrettably, parental rights were downgraded.
Sixteen states—but not Missouri—responded by enacting laws to protect parental rights.
But this year there is momentum for the legislature to finally step up and protect parental rights. H.B. 2426 would restore the protection that was in place prior to the Troxel decision.
It prohibits government officials from interfering with parental rights unless there is a specific situation in which the government can show it has a compelling interest in being involved and is using the least restrictive way possible to protect that compelling interest.
Specifically this bill states:
- The right of the parent includes the right to direct the education, health care, mental health, and upbringing—including moral and religious upbringing—of the child.
- The right to direct the child’s education includes the right to choose public, private, parochial, parish, home, or family-paced education school.
- When consent is necessary, it is the parent, not the child, whose consent must be obtained.
- The right to opt out of all educational data collection except data that is essential for public school student records is established.
- In line with existing federal law, the right to receive a written itemization of what is alleged against the parents during a social services investigation is established.
- The right to go to court against any official who violates the parent’s rights is established.