When an 8-year-old boy wandered off without permission to browse the neighborhood dollar store a few days before Christmas, he set off a legal battle that tested our nation’s highest protections for the home and family. With HSLDA’s help, his parents won that struggle.
The facts of the case were never in dispute. After playing outside, the boy disobeyed family rules and went on his own to the shopping center near the family’s Texas home. Someone there reported him to the police, who then returned the boy to his parents.
Almost two weeks later, a Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) investigator came to the family’s home. She wanted to enter the house to inspect living conditions and interview all five of the family’s children. The parents said they had dealt appropriately with the situation by talking to their son about what he’d done wrong and grounding him.
They declined to let the investigator into the home.