Controversial parental rights bill heads for the Indiana Senate
By Schyler Altherr, TheStatehouseFile.com Jan 16, 2025
A bill concerning Hoosier parents, Senate Bill 143, is heading to the Senate after passing the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday afternoon. Authored by Judicial Committee Chair Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, the “parental rights” bill has been fraught with controversy since its first hearing a week ago.
The bill as written “prohibits a governmental entity from: (1) advising, directing, or coercing a child to withhold certain information from the child’s parent; or (2) denying a child’s parent access to certain information. [It] allows a parent to bring an action against a governmental entity for certain violations and provides for certain relief.”
A similar bill was proposed in the last session but failed to make it far in the legislative process. The American Civil Liberties Union had warned that it “could have been used to force a teacher to ‘out’ an LGBTQ student to their parents.”
The ACLU’s executive director, Chris Daley, told TheStatehouseFile.com the organization also has reservations about the 2025 piece of legislation.
“We are concerned because it is not evolving. The broadness of the bill has not been addressed,” he said.
Legislation involving the issue of “parental rights” is being discussed across the country. A 2023 report from the independent Georgetown University think tank Future-Ed identified 62 parental rights bills across 24 states.
For Hoosiers, the 2025 parental rights bill has been most discussed regarding schools and the Department of Child Services.
Parents Grant and Amanda Phillips testified in favor of the bill. They told a story of a difficult two-year fight with Indiana’s Child Protective Services to return their children to their custody after false claims of child abuse.
“In our case, DCS removed access to medical information regarding our children with no court order,” said Grant Phillips regarding information essential for their case.
Another parent, Yvonne Cook, described being investigated by DCS and school administrative staff over disagreements with her child’s gender identity. Cook, believing her daughter became subject to “transgender ideology” through video games during the pandemic, went through multiple avenues to stop from “losing her,” she said, including leaving their home state of Illinois to come to Indiana.
“SB 143 forces institutions to respect parental roles and encourage a more lawful evidence approach in supporting our children,” said Cook.
Before the second hearing on Wednesday, TheStatehouseFile.com interviewed multiple Hoosier parents to hear their opinions on the bill.
A mother named Casey wished her last name to be withheld for privacy reasons. She has four kids under the age of 7.
“Parents should absolutely be disclosed important information. It’s our call of duty to raise these kids. We should all be on the same page,” she said.
A Pendleton mother, Meghan Kapp, held some reservations in terms of the effects of the bill. Her concerns came from the differing ways of parenting kids of different ages.
“My knee-jerk reaction is that I would want to know everything about my child,” said Kapp. “[But] if there was a child 16 or 17 years old, maybe they don’t feel comfortable talking to a parent and they are confiding with an outsider.”
Sen. Rodney Pol, D-Michigan City, Democratic Senate minority caucus chair, told The Statehouse File he does not believe the bill’s contents will stand up in court.
“Knowing the courts have signaled there is a right to privacy with children, essentially we are wasting our time pushing legislation that we know is dead in the water once it gets challenged,” he said.
The bill moved through the committee with a 9-2 vote. Sens. Pol and Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, voted against the bill. Democratic Sens. Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis, and Lonnie Randolph, D-East Chicago, who seemed opposed to the bill during the hearings, voted yes.
Brown shared her thoughts about the purpose of the bill after Wednesday’s hearing.
“Now we have the ability to say that governmental entities aren’t giving me the information about my child I need, you can now go to the attorney general and say, make them do that,” she said.
Schyler Altherr is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
