On Tuesday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier provided a legal opinion (full text) to a member of the Florida legislature concluding that public schools must accommodate parental requests for their children to participate in release time for religious instruction. The opinion cited Florida statutes requiring schools to adopt policies authorizing parents to request and be granted permission for their students to be absent from school for religious instruction. Then he added:
Crucially, RTRI [Released Time for Religious Instruction] enables parents to honor their sacred duties to raise their children in the faith. The LORD—author of our natural rights and duties—requires nothing less: “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
Parents’ exercise of these rights and duties redound to the State’s benefit. First, it relieves the State of the primary cost and responsibility of shaping the civic and moral character of succeeding generations. Second, it ensures that succeeding generations of citizens are properly shaped in terms of civic, moral, and religious character—an ingredient essential to the maintenance and longevity of our republican system of government. ...
CBS News 12 reports on the AG's legal opinion.
