Last week in Florida, 6-year-old Nadia King was taken from her public school by police and committed to a mental health facility, all before her mother was contacted or notified.
Fortunately, change is coming to Florida, but it seems like it can’t get there soon enough.
Another victim of the Baker Act
Under a 50-year-old Florida law called the “Baker Act”, a mental health professional may place a child in a mental health facility for testing via involuntary commitment without parental consent if the mental health professional believes that the child poses a threat to their safety or the safety of others.
“The law was supposed to allow for intervention in cases of imminent danger, said Mark Cavitt, director of pediatric psychiatry at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg,” according to an article from the Washington Post. Instead, The Baker Law is too often used “due to inadequate mental health training or resources within the school system.”
According a report from the Tampa Bay Times last year, about 7,500 incidents related to the Baker Act have occurred since 2012, or about 1,000 per year. That’s more cases than those involving “imminent damage.”
Nadia threw a tantrum at school. Although she was perfectly calm, even “pleasant” by the time officers picked her up, teachers reported that she had thrown objects into the room. It is possible that someone gets hurt.
But is this really the kind of nervous breakdown requiring involuntary placement in an institution? Or could it be “a simple negative reaction to stress”, as Enrico Gnaulati suggests in Back to normal: Why ordinary childhood behavior is confused with ADHD, bipolar disorder and autism spectrum disorder?
Gnaulti points out that today’s schools confront children with academic and social expectations beyond children’s developmental levels, while simultaneously depriving them of “the means to cope with this stress: lively, kinetic and imaginative play”.
What is perhaps most shocking is that despite the school’s claims that they made efforts to “de-escalate” the crisis before Nadia was evacuated, apparently none of these de-escalation efforts included contacting the girl’s mother.
By the time Martina Falk learned her daughter was having a tantrum, Nadia was already on her way to the mental health facility.
Fortunately, however, the days of schools, doctors, counselors and others intruding on families’ privacy may be coming to an end in the Sunshine State.
Parents’ Bill of Rights to the rescue?
Although this is by no means a response to the Baker Law, Senate Bill 1634 and House Bill 1059, companion bills proposing the Parents’ Bill of Rights, would strengthen the role of parents like Martina in the lives of their children. By clearly setting out the various rights that parents have in raising their children, the law would prevent the child’s caregivers from being excluded from these vital healthcare decisions.
This concept should already be obvious. The Supreme Court of the United States in 1979 Parham vs. J.R. made it clear that because children are unable to make wise and informed decisions about their own health care or mental health most of the time, “parents can and should make those decisions.”
Parents. Not teachers, or administrators, or even a third-party psychiatric assessor.
Of course, sometimes emergency intervention is necessary, such as when a teenager is suicidal (or even murderous). But such interventions should be reserved for times that are actually emergencies.
Luckily, the Parents’ Bill of Rights had a better month than Martina and her daughter.
Already passed by the House Education and Health and Human Services committees, HB 1059 was passed by the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Feb. 18, its final House committee vote. His next stop is the full house.
Its counterpart, SB 1634, has already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Education Committee and awaits a hearing and vote in the Senate Rules Committee. Only then can it be voted for or against the entire Senate.
While each bill passes its respective chamber, the crossover is mostly procedural. We even have early indications that the governor is aware of the bill and ready to sign it.
“You don’t own my vote”
Of course, not everyone likes the Parents’ Bill of Rights. Both Planned Parenthood of Florida and Florida Equality have been present and spoken against the bills at several committee hearings.
I was told that during a hearing, a member of the minority Democratic committee told Planned Parenthood representatives:You didn’t buy me and you don’t own my vote. I know what you want me to do. But it was the parents in my neighborhood who put me here. They voted for me. And they want to have a say in the lives of their children.”
This is my favorite “If only I could have been a fly on the wall” moment of all those audiences. How I would have liked to see a video of that! (And not because it was Planned Parenthood, but because it was any special interest group rising to oppose the natural legal rights of parents.)
Conclusion
If passed, the Parents’ Bill of Rights will not suddenly stop all abuses of the 50-year-old Baker Act. But it will elevate the status of parents in the eyes of courts, schools and governments across Florida — and it should help reduce abuse like the one Nadia and her mother suffered last week.
In fact, families like theirs are why we fight to preserve parental rights in every state, and why we’re so excited to see these gains in Florida!
Sincerely,
Michael Ramey
Executive Director
