Overturns California Parental Consent Law

 In 1994, the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL), a major grantee of the Legal Services Corporation, played a pivotal role in overturning California’s parental consent law. Approved by the Governor and legislature in 1987, the law required a teenager to seek the approval of a parent or a juvenile court judge before getting an abortion. Working with the American Civil Liberties Union and a private law firm, the NCYL argued that the law infringed on a teenager’s autonomy, and was unnecessary anyway because allowing minors to get abortions without parental consent does not adversely affect family ties.  Furthermore, they argued that there was no evidence that “abortions were harmful physically or psychologically to the teens.”
 
For More Information, see The Recorder, July 5 and Dec. 16, 1994
 

Legal Services Grantee Forces Couple to Sell Home

 One of the most outrageous displays of legal services’ hostility to the family is the attempt by the Idaho Legal Aid Society (ILAS) to take a four-year-old child away from his legal parents. Karla and Leland Swenson adopted a half-Sioux boy when he was one-day old and had been raising him on their Idaho dairy farm when the ILAS charged in claiming the boy should live with his Indian relatives. Neither the natural father nor the mother seek custody. However, the ILAS, representing the natural father’s Indian sister, asserts an Indian tribe’s efforts to preserve its cultural integrity takes precedence over the best interests of the youth. Experts argue that placing the child with a new family after four years with the only parents he has ever known would be tragic for the youth. Thanks to the ILAS, the Swensons recently sold their home to continue the fight in court.

 See The Dallas Morning News, Oct. 31, 1993, and USA Today, Dec. 16, 1993
 

Defender of Rapist in Parental Rights Case

 Lehigh Valley Legal Services of Pennsylvania recently tried to give a teenage rapist custody of a child he fathered by his rape of a 13-year-old. Legal services attorneys argued the case even though a psychologist concluded he would endanger the child if given such rights. Nevertheless, they tried to argue that termination of the criminal’s parental rights was unconstitutional on the grounds that rape is not defined in the adoption act.
 
See The Morning Call  (Allentown), March 2, 1995
 

Criticizes Parent-Requested Drug Searches

 The National Center For Youth Law attacked some Idaho parents for inviting police into their homes to search for drugs they suspected their children of using. The innovative program is completely voluntary and the police do not make an arrest unless they find especially dangerous drugs or large amounts. Yet all legal services could do was admonish bereaved parents for trying to save their children.

 See The Idaho Statesman, April 3, 1995

 
Homosexual Advocacy

 In 1989, attorneys from the Legal Aid Society of New York, an LSC grantee, successfully argued that a “gay life” partner should have the same right as a spouse to remain in a rent-controlled apartment after the tenant’s death. In that case, the New York State Supreme Court basically recognized homosexual couples as the legal and moral equivalent of the traditional family.

 See Braschi v. Stahl Associates, 1989 WL 73109 (NY 1989)
 

Supports Public Housing for Unwed Minors

 In 1993, Central Pennsylvania Legal Services sued a public housing authority because the authority refused to lease a unit to a 16-year-old girl. Lawyers tried to argue that unwed minors have a right to public housing because they meet the HUD admission criteria of being an official “category of eligible applicants.” In other words, because there is a group of unwed minors, any unwed minor is automatically entitled to taxpayer-subsidized housing.

 See Rodriquez v. Reading Housing Authority, 8F. 3d 961 Cir. 1993