Sen. Gordon Votes NO on H.B. 5468 to Protect Parental Rights from Government Overreach

HARTFORD, CT – State Senator Jeff Gordon (R-Woodstock) released the following statement regarding the passage of House Bill 5468 on May 4th, 2026, that will affect parents who decide to homeschool their children.

“I strongly opposed this bill because it is not about education or child safety, but rather it is a targeted, direct interference in the lives of hard-working, law-abiding parents who are making decisions on how to best educate their children.

Last year and this year, I fought to defend parental rights. The U.S. Supreme Court, on multiple occasions, has defined this as a protected right in the Constitution. The Court stated that parents have a right “to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control,” that the court has “recognized the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children,” and that “In a long line of cases, we have held that, in addition to the specific freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights, the ‘liberty’ specially protected by the Due Process Clause includes the right…to direct the education and upbringing of one’s children.”

I stand up for all individual rights, parental rights, and medical freedoms. I do not pick and choose from among them. The U.S. Constitution and the Connecticut Constitution were written to protect our rights in part from being abridged by government.

During debate, the proponents of this bill kept citing several horrific cases of child deaths and a case of years of home abduction. We all agree we should do what we can to protect children. Still, this bill unfairly tags homeschooling parents as guilty until proven innocent by forcing them into the state’s Department of Children and Families (DCF). That is backwards and wrong.

All cited cases above have one common denominator of serious concern: DCF’s failure to act and protect children. No fact has been shown that homeschooling was a cause of these events. In fact, the Office of the Child Advocate recently issued a blistering report showing the abject failures time and time again of DCF: “Every day, the deficits in case practice have consequences for children” and “The deficits in the quality of case practice must be urgently remedied.” If this homeschooling bill were truly about child safety, then the legislature would have focused on fixing the many problems at the DCF. Instead, the proponents of the bill continued to ignore the systemic issues within DCF.

There has also been no convincing evidence that homeschooled students do not fare well. I cited New York State, where homeschooling is highly regulated. Homeschooled students there do not do better than homeschooled students here, and conversely, those students here are not at a disadvantage compared with their counterparts in New York.

I spoke loudly and clearly in the Senate that children are not property of the government. Law-abiding children know their children best and do what they can every day to care for them and to decide what is best for their education. We do not need more state bureaucracy and more micro-management of our lives. I hear this time and time again from parents, and as a parent myself, I agree.
I will continue to stand up for common-sense public policy and stand against unneeded government intrusion into our lives and livelihoods.”