Pro-Family Legislation in Virginia in 2018

State legislatures around the country met this winter to consider various legislation, and because most family statutory law is state code, much of that legislation can focus on families.  Here is a brief summary from the Virginia Family Foundation of the pro-family legislation passed by the Virginia General Assembly this year which will largely become effective as law on July 1, 2018.

 

Adoption
Making it easier for foster children to stay with their relatives – SB 636 (R-Dunnavant) and HB 1333 (R-Brewer). This bill created the “Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program” to facilitate child placements with relatives to ensure permanency for children for whom adoption or returning home are not viable options. For years, there tended to be a stigma towards foster families who were also relatives of the child, with a perception that they were only really concerned with drawing money from the state to help support the child. But in reality, it’s a very good idea for children in need of a home to have the opportunity live with relatives when possible.
Expanding opportunities for more people to adopt – SB 920 (D-Ebbin) and HB 427 (D-Herring). Under the current law, if a person has had their civil rights restored by the Governor, they are eligible to adopt a child, but only after waiting 10 years from the time of their conviction. These bills lower that wait period to eight years if they have met certain criteria such as completing a substance abuse treatment program, shown themselves to be drug free, and have complied with all court imposed obligations.
Speeding up the adoption process for close relatives – HB 241 (R-Brewer). In the cases where children are living as foster children with close relatives, the foster parents must wait three years before being able to begin the process to adopt the child. This bill lowered that time to two years.
Speeding up the adoption process for foster families – HB 418 (D-Carroll Foy). Under the current law, a court is required to grant an adoption after a child has lived with the foster parents continuously for 18 months and the child-placing agency responsible for the child consents. This bill lowered that time frame to 6 months.

Life
Helping victims of Human Trafficking – SB 725 (R-Dunnavant). This bill provides for signs to be placed at rest areas and certain health care facilities with information about the national Human Trafficking hotline to alert possible witnesses or victims of human trafficking to the availability of a means to report crimes or gain assistance. One welcome effect of this law is that abortion facilities will now post information about human trafficking. Given the pervasive connections between sex trafficking and abortion facilities, this could be a real help to victims in need.  
Providing protections for patients in end-of-life situations – SB 222 (D-Edwards) and HB 226 (R-Stolle). This bill was hammered out over a two-year study group of which The Family Foundation was apart. It establishes a more defined and robust process for situations in which a patient and/or family and the hospital disagree about the appropriate treatment for patients in end-of-lifer situations. It provides greater protections for all parties involved. For patients, it ensures that any required life-sustaining care includes hydration, nutrition, maintenance medication, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. It also protects the rights of conscience of medical professionals. 
Helping babies affected by the opioid crisis – SB 389 (R-Chafin) and HB 1157 (R-Pillion). These bills task the Department of Heath with developing, coordinating, and implementing a plan for services for substance-exposed infants in the Commonwealth. Among other things, the plan includes improving the screening and identification of substance-using pregnant women, and the use of multidisciplinary approaches to intervention and service delivery during the prenatal period and following the birth of the substance-exposed child. With this plan, many mothers will feel better equipped to choose life for their unborn child.

Constitutional Government
Greater free speech protections for students on Virginia’s college campuses – HB 344 (R-Landes). This bill prohibits any public institution of higher education from abridging the constitutional freedom of speech on its campus of any enrolled student, faculty, employees, or invited guests. It also requires each public institution of higher education to establish and include in its student handbook, on its website, and in its student orientation programs policies regarding speech that is constitutionally protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the process to report incidents of disruption of such constitutionally protected speech.
Prompt payment for property taken through eminent domain – SB 278 (D-Petersen) This bill requires money judgments for the government’s taking of land to be paid to the effected person within 30 days of a final determination.
Expanding the definition of “lost profits” in the calculation for just compensation in eminent domain cases – SB 809 (D-Petersen). This bill ensures that property owners who have their farms or businesses taken through eminent domain receive the full value of their lost profits from the land they would have otherwise used for up to three years.  

Parental Rights
Providing more opportunities to restore parental rights – HB 1219 (D-Reid). This bill requires a court, at a foster care review hearing, to inquire from the child’s guardian ad litem and the local board of social services whether the foster child has expressed a preference for finding out whether the parental rights of his parents can be restored. If so, the court must order an investigation to see if that is a viable option. Following the investigation, if the local board of social services or the child's guardian ad litem deems it appropriate to do so, either may file a petition for the restoration of parental rights.
Emphasizing the value of shared parenting in custody determinations – HB 1351 (R-Davis). This bill requires courts to more closely consider whether joint custody arrangements are feasible when awarding child custody. While divorce is a terrible tragedy to be avoided if possible, in the event that it does happen, children are generally better off when they have the opportunity to be raised by both their mom and their dad, and parents are still parents even after a divorce.
Protecting parents who homeschool – HB 1370 (R-Pogge). This bill clarified a point of confusion in the law, and now makes sure that parents only need to provide their child with a program of study or curriculum, but do not need to provide such curriculum to the state or locality.    

Helping victims of Human Trafficking – SB 725 (R-Dunnavant). This bill provides for signs to be placed at rest areas and certain health care facilities with information about the national Human Trafficking hotline to alert possible witnesses or victims of human trafficking to the availability of a means to report crimes or gain assistance. One welcome effect of this law is that abortion facilities will now post information about human trafficking. Given the pervasive connections between sex trafficking and abortion facilities, this could be a real help to victims in need. 

 

State legislatures can accomplish a great deal to promote and protect family restoration.

Holding Together a Family through Political Persecution

This informative and thoughtful guest post is from by 2L Dr. Jennifer Howard Szakaly.

Perhaps it’s a strange thing for a mother of four and family dentist, to take up a cause on another continent – and a cause not about dentistry, but rather about family and farming.  It makes more sense, however, if you knew that I’m a dentist in one of the most wonderful farming communities in Virginia. And, through one of my farming patients, I was lead to an International Facebook Community for Women in Agriculture. What began as an occasional post from a South African farmer on the community page calling for prayers, eventually broke into a wave of additional posts about South African Farmers murdered at the hands of what they claimed to be racist extremists. Stories of rape, torture and mutilation of children; a world far contrasting my quiet community. 

  

The farmers of South Africa did appear to share the qualities of the farmers in my community. Farmers rely on the land and are often generationally invested. They are the people who through tremendous personal sacrifice, dirt under their nails, holes in their jeans and the toll of the sun on their faces, feed a nation. Some explained the murders as robberies gone wrong, but the facts told a different story. Days of torture as well as the targets of the crimes, diminish this explanation; targeting poor farmers in robberies certainly will not be productive, and torturing and murdering infant children certainly is not inherent to theft.

Most nations recognize their dependence on those who forage animals and plants possessing generations of unwritten wisdom farming families pass from one generation to the next. The South African Parliament, however, has unanimously voted to expel by force any white farmer from land that has been in families for generations. If there was a question of whether these horrific acts have been racially motivated, the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa made it clear in his address following the vote, violent disposal of white farmers may be an option and white farmers will not be compensated for the government seizure. This pronouncement effectively made racial persecution nationally recognized and state sanctioned.  These farmers and their families, now the target of open political persecution in South Africa, have been subjected to violent rape torture and murders for a decade and now attacks are averaging one family per day. Some claim that this is redress for a historical wrong.  Justice, however, cannot possibly come from these atrocities, and a nation cannot be healed by stabbing its families in the heart. 

I had the pleasure of interviewing Andre VanZyl, a white South African farmer who has farmed on her father’s family farm her entire adult life. She tells me that much like the settlement of the American West, generations ago families who were skilled in farming sought to claim undeveloped unoccupied land. No battles were waged over the land, no settlements were uprooted. They simply created a homestead from a vast span of opportunity. These farmers today in South Africa are similar; not oppressors, not individuals without blisters on their hands and sore backs. Andre tells me of her neighbor who was killed “three Sundays ago” and another a few years ago, and yet another that was shot but survived. “All within a 20-mile radius.” I look at her profile picture and there she is standing beside a large trademark green John Deere Tractor with her husband beside her. I then turn to her posts, threaded with faith in a God “who is a God of order, love and respect for others.”  She has no idea how this situation will resolve for her family, but her faith is not lost.  Other nations are offering solutions to rescue these families.

South Africa is a nation deeply rooted in Christianity.  I cannot help but think of Dr. King’s letters from a Birmingham jail, where he cries foul at the hypocrisy of Church leaders failing to take a stand against racial, human, injustice.  Let us learn and grow from history, let us not repeat the mistakes of our father’s father. Targeting the weak, the unsupported, and those without the resources to flee the wheel of torture is genocide.

We need farming families. We need their unique skill set and unmatched work ethic. We need those committed to feed a nation. For now, I pray for them and with all of the oppressed and their oppressors to find the power of love. I also pray that someone with power and means, beyond those I find at my disposal, could pool resources to offer opportunity for these farmers who are in high demand and short supply here, in this great country, where we respect and honor those who feed our nation.

Is Abortion a Speech Requirement in California? NIFLA at SCOTUS

Free speech in California pregnancy resource centers was on the line at the Supreme Court of the United States today.  The Washington Post sets out the first amendment issues well, emphasizing how the State of California is coercing pro-abortion speech in pro-life centers.  But see below how Bloomberg Law’s United States Law Week observed uneasiness with the state law from the most liberal Justices.  

United States Law Week     Justices Struggle with Abortion Disclosure Requirements Posted March 20, 2018, 11:45 A.M. ET By Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson The U.S. Supreme Court seemed likely to strike down California laws requiring pro-life centers to provide information about state funded family planning services, including abortion. Justice Sonia Sotomayor—considered one of the court’s more liberal-leaning justices—said that the law as broadly interpreted by the state was “burdensome” and “wrong” in some contexts. And Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—another liberal-leaning justice—raised concerns about the state’s requirement that the centers make disclosures in up to 13 languages. It is one thing to require a group to make factual disclosures, but it’s another to make it do so in so many languages. Justice Elena Kagan, who also often votes with the liberal bloc, was concerned that California was targeting pro-life centers while letting abortion facilities take a pass. If the law has been gerrymandered to apply only to pro-life centers, that’s a “serious issue,” Kagan said. But there’s no way to know if the law is appropriately targeted because there hasn’t been a trial in this case, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said. The case comes to the court as a challenge to the lower court’s preliminary determination that the law is likely to pass constitutional scrutiny and therefore shouldn’t be blocked from enforcing. Should the court remand the case for a trial to answer some questions left open at this point? Breyer asked rhetorically. The case is Nat. Inst. of Family & Life Advocates v. Becerra, U.S., No. 16-1140, argued 3/20/18.         Pro-life and pro-abortion positions generally do not get equal treatment in law school casebooks, but these Justices are genuinely concerned with coerced views in California. The appellant here is concerned with how abortion truly harms women, their children, and families.

 

Is Divorce Ever Easy?

Is divorce ever easy?  It’s Over Easy is a website that takes couples through divorce for a starting fee of $750.  Legal Zoom has offered a divorce platform called “Wevorce” since 2012, calling it the premier self-guided divorce solution, for $949.  State filing fees and procedural rules are still required, so any attempt to DIY divorce without an attorney is imprudent and irresponsible at best.

Some think divorce is becoming trendy.  Angelina Jolie’s divorce lawyer now offers quickie divorces online, according to the NY Times, calling the Beverly Hills lawyer “glamorous.”  Here’s the rationale – “Since couples now meet online, plan weddings online, cheat online and find couples therapists online, it is only logical that they should be able to divorce online.”  Albert Mohler discusses why divorce is never easy, suggesting that a change in marriage’s endurance led to a change in gender qualifications for marriage.  

Regardless of how it is dressed up, the effects of divorce are generally earth-shattering, as a recent article in The Federalist points out, “no matter how anyone tries to glam it up or brush it off, divorce is never over easy.” In fact, the article reminds us that “for children and nearly all couples, there is no such thing as an easy divorce. And when we tell them divorce is not that big of a deal, we invalidate their pain.”  Author Pat Conroy has said “each divorce is the death of a small civilization.”

Divorce is pervasive with pain and loss - emotionally, socially, financially, physically, and it should never be something easily entered into or done without the advice of wise spiritual and legal counsel.  American philosopher George Santayana in Reason in Society proffers that “no suggested substitute for the family is in the least satisfactory. Those forms of free love or facile divorce to which radical opinion and practice incline in these days tend to transform the family without abolishing it. The family in a barbarous age remains sacrosanct and traditional,” in its near perfection.  Marriage’s strength, however, has been subject to attack through the spiritual warfare of divorce.   The permanence aspect of the marital bond is biblically clear from Genesis 2:24, as marital partners become “one flesh,” explaining the pain experienced in divorce by separating that oneness. 

What can the law, if anything, do to strengthen marital permanence?  There are alternatives to divorce, particularly for the Christian couple, and Christian attorneys can be prepared with such alternatives when distressed clients think the only solution to their marriage problems is divorce.  Understanding and Encouraging Realistic Reconciliation in an Age of Divorce offers some solutions.  Furthermore, Scripture encourages alternative dispute resolution (I Corinthians 6).  Even if dissolution is the ultimate outcome, communication, mediation, negotiation, arbitration, and collaborative law can be better methods of problem solving in family contexts.  Litigation – online or in person - is not the only way to solve marital problems.  The truth is divorce is never easy.