New York Supreme Court (December 30, 1993) in the Appellate Division, stated in the case of Alfonso v. Fernandez, that the public schools in New York City are:
<Prohibited from dispensing condoms to unemancipated minor students without the prior consent of their parents or guardians, or without an opt-out provision....
[The condom distribution plan] is tantamount to condoning promiscuity and sexual permissiveness, and that the exposure to condoms and their ready availability may encourage sexual relations among adolescents at an earlier age and/or with more frequency, thereby weakening their moral and religious values....
[The court agrees that] supplying condoms to students upon request has absolutely nothing to do with education, [but is a] health service....
[Parents should not be] compelled by state authority to send their children into an environment where they will be permitted, even encouraged, to obtain a contraceptive device, which the parents disfavor as a matter of private belief....
The amici miss the point. The primary purpose of the Board of Education is not to serve as a health provider. Its reason for being is education.
No judicial or legislative authority directs or permits teachers and other public school educators to dispense condoms to minor, unemancipated students without the knowledge or consent of their parents. Nor do we believe that they have any inherent authority to do so....
[Parents] enjoy a well-recognized liberty interest in rearing and educating their children to accord with their own views, [citing U.S. Supreme Court cases from the 1920's, Pierce v. Society of Sisters and Meyer v. Nebraska] The Constitution gives parents the right to regulate their children's sexual behavior as best they can, [a contraceptive decision] is clearly within the purview of the petitioners' constitutionally protected right to rear their children....
[The AIDS problem cannot force parents] to surrender a parenting right-specifically, to influence and guide the sexual activity of their children without state interference....
The threat of AIDS cannot summarily obliterate this Nation's fundamental values....We conclude that the condom availability component of
the program violates the petitioners' constitutional due process rights to direct the upbringing of their children.> 1993NY001
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
1993NY001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). New York Supreme Court, December 30, 1993, in the Appellate Division case of Alfonso v. Fernandez. "What Are They Teaching in the Public Schools?" The Phyllis Schlafly Report (Alton, IL: Eagle Trust Fund, January 1994), Vol. 27, No. 6, pp. 3-4.