A case now before the Supreme Court of Texas may become the first real test of the state’s newly minted “parental rights amendment,” and the stakes could not be higher. The state constitutional amendment, approved by Texas voters in November 2025, declares that parents have the “inherent right to exercise care, custody, and control” over their children and to make decisions about their upbringing. Any state action that “interferes” with those rights is subject to the equivalent of strict scrutiny—the highest level of constitutional protection.

On its face, the language sounds familiar and even benign. Few Americans object to the idea that parents, not the government, should ordinarily make decisions about their children. But constitutional language does not exist in a vacuum, and this case forces a confrontation with what the “parental rights” movement is actually seeking to protect and whom it leaves exposed.

The dispute before the court arises from allegations that are not remotely ambiguous or cultural in nature. According to the record, the conduct at issue includes food deprivation, beatings with a belt, forced wall sits that lasted hours, and prolonged kneeling on grains of rice—forms of punishment that most people would recognize as physical and emotional abuse. The question now being seriously entertained is whether the Texas Constitution requires courts to presume such treatment is protected parental decision-making unless the state can meet the nearly insurmountable burden of strict scrutiny.

That this argument is being advanced at all is chilling. That it is being supported by........

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