Protest Ohio Outrage: Father Jailed Because His Daughter Didn't Get Her GED!

A few days ago I shared this outrageous story with you--Father Jailed Because His Adult Daughter Fails to Get Her GED. In the case, father Brian Gegner was ordered to see to it that his daughter gets her GED, but she has not done so, in part because she struggles with math. The daughter's problems in school came at a time when she lived with her mother. The daughter herself--now almost 19-years-old--says that she alone is responsible for her own problems and that her father shouldn't be blamed. Nevertheless, the father is in jail on a six month sentence.

The jailed father goes before Judge David J. Niehaus on Friday--I urge all of you to call Niehaus and also the Governor of Ohio to demand Brian Gegner's release. The contact information is:

BUTLER COUNTY Juvenile Justice Center Judge David J. Niehaus 513-887-3318 fax: 513-887-5592

Michael Robinson of the California Alliance for Families and Children issued a call to action on this case earlier this week, and has been checking into the case and speaking with Ohio officials. Robinson reveals several important facts about the case:

1) Both Robinson and Ohio WCPO TV reporter Deb Silverman have been digging into the Gegner family's history, and Robinson says "both parents are clean, they simply were unable to get their daughter to stay in school."

2) This sad chain of events was set off because the parents did the right thing--they were concerned about their daughter's truancy, acknowledged that they were not able to control her, and called the police for help. I would also add that this is an example of two divorced parents working together to try to help their child, something this country needs a lot more of.

3) Perhaps most significant of all, Judge David J. Niehaus and two colleagues were specifically accused of judicial abuse by Butler County Commissioner Mike Fox in his 2003 report "A Culture of Secrecy, Fear and Judicial Abuse."

Again, I urge all of you to call the judge in this case and also the Governor of Ohio to demand Brian Gegner's release. The CAFC press release has generated protest calls but we need a lot more--the contact information is above.

1) According to CBS, the judge is "standing firm" and says Gegner will "only be released if his daughter passes the GED." So a parent can be held in jail until his or her child passes a test?! If my son fails Geometry, should my wife and I be jailed until he passes Geometry in summer school?

"The Domestic Relations and Juvenile Courts of Butler County foster a culture of secrecy, fear and judicial abuse that violates the most fundamental and sacred rights guaranteed by our nation’s Constitution — the rights of due process of the laws. Those who are most directly affected by decisions of these courts — parties to the actions — are routinely excluded from court proceedings and deliberations, told to wait outside the hearing room in a hallway while their lives, personal property, children and homes are divided up by strangers." To read the full report, click here.

3) The most recent Associated Press article on the case can be seen here. A Butler County TV station cites the CAFC on the case here.

4) To watch a video of the daughter discussing her father's jailing, click here.

"What was the juvenile court doing to help these parents with dealing with Brittany's destructive behavior before it got this far? Did the court offer any kind of parenting resources like The Parent Project, which help parents deal with such problems?

"The Parent Project is a parenting skills program designed specifically for parents with strong-willed or out-of-control children. Because of its success in preventing, identifying and intervening in the most destructive of adolescent behaviors, the Parent Project has won three state awards in California and has been successfully adopted for use by hundreds of communities throughout the nation."

I think Robinson's remarks are particularly relevant because the parents got in trouble because they went to authorities asking for help.

Again, I urge all of you to call the judge in this case and also the Governor of Ohio to demand Brian Gegner's release.

[Note: If you or someone you love is faced with a divorce or needs help with child custody, child support, false accusations, Parental Alienation, or other family law or criminal law matters, ask Glenn for help by clicking here.]

I haven’t benn ablr to find it, but there is a song lyric - the refrain of the song is “Life’s like like that sometimes” It goes like this:

So there I was looking back at him,
And I said, “Just who do you think you are
to judge me like that?”
He looked back at me and said,
“Well, I’m Judge Smith
of the Superior Court.”

Life’s like that sometimes.

This is an interesting case that pits state power against substantive due process, which in my opinion is a constitutional abomination. Each State has broad police powers, including the power here to deprive liberty to achieve some legitimate state interest - I haven’t looked into the statutory authority for what the Judge did, but I am assuming he acted pursuant to a statute. The only check on such police power is the State constitution first, then the federal constitution.

Following Dredd Scott, where the Court vitiated the Missouri Compromize, the Supreme Court slowly began to protect individual rights not specifically ennumerated in our Constitution. The evil spawn of substantive due process has been privacy rights, which has federally protected the murder of tens of millions of the unborn. But I digress...

With respect to education, the Supreme Court to recognized a substantive due process right “to control the education of one’s children” and void state laws mandating that all students attend public school in Pierce v. Society of Sisters. So the Court made it safe for religious education, and bought itself some goodwill with the religious public, when it said:

We think it entirely plain that the Act of 1922 unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control. As often heretofore pointed out, rights guaranteed by the Constitution may not be abridged by legislation which has no reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of the state. The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.

There is more than enough to have decided this case based upon the free exercise of religion rather than substantive due process, but that is adiscussion for another day.

Without spending too much time with research, it seems to me that the issue in this case is, given that you have a liberty interest in choosing how to educate, e.g. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, do you have a liberty interest in choosing not to educate? It sure would seem to follow, IMHO. Which illustrates the danger an ill logic of federal substantive due process rights in a federal system. Police power justs drains slowly to the King - oops, I mean Washington, not the King...

If Ohio wants to legislate a fiduciary society by jailing parents of students who fail, that is their right, as I see it. However, as it stands now, the people of Ohio just expect to be saved from their legislator’s stupidity by a federal judge. So why bother picking up your pitch fork and run to the satehouse? Absent changing the law, your other option is to move to another state, whose social experimentation regime is more friendly.

So substantive due process protects the incumbency of idiot legislators, while at the same time homoginizing our country at the expense of the general liberty of the States and their citizens. It may also protect this poor fellow. Whoppie for the feds!

</rant>

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