Bill Description: House Bill 724 would recognize certain safety-related rights for children in foster care.
Rating: -1
Does it violate the spirit or the letter of either the United States Constitution or the Idaho Constitution? Examples include restrictions on speech, public assembly, the press, privacy, private property, or firearms. Conversely, does it restore or uphold the protections guaranteed in the US Constitution or the Idaho Constitution?
House Bill 724 would create Section 39-1212, Idaho Code, which would be titled, “foster child safety,” and list “safety-related rights” for foster children.
Unfortunately, the bill largely misapplies the concept of rights, asserting positive rights to certain goods and services at the expense of others. Rights, properly understood, are negative rights; that is, certain actions that others may not commit (such as assault and murder) because they violate inalienable rights, which are inherently and irrevocably possessed by every human being.
While some of the rights recognized by this bill fall appropriately within this scope (e.g., “freedom from physical, sexual, emotional, or other abuse”), most others assert positive rights to goods and services (e.g., “The right to adequate and appropriate basic essentials, including food, shelter, clothing, and personal necessities”) that necessarily imposes an obligation on others. Such things are not rights. They may be promises or agreements, but they are not rights.
The bill also contains contradictory notions, such as subsection (1)(f), which asserts a right to “reasonable consideration of the child's safety during transitions between foster care placements when practicable and consistent with the safety of the child.” When and how is consideration of safety not consistent with safety?
The proper application of the concepts contained in this bill are obligations that the government assumes and, by extension, passes on to foster care providers as part of a contractual agreement. Such voluntarily assumed obligations may indeed be positive and consistent with the goals of foster care, but rights are not granted by statute. A proper understanding of rights was the foundational principle on which this nation was founded, and this bill’s attempts to redefine rights run counter to these principles.
(-1)
