This week, we’re talking with Patti Sullivan, the Parental Rights Foundation's Florida State Coordinator. Patti and Michael were in DC to bring attention to two national bills aimed at protecting parental rights: the Families' Rights and Responsibilities Act and the Parental Rights Amendment. They discuss those bills and their efforts in this episode. The EPPiC Broadcast is hosted by Michael Ramey, president of the Parental Rights Foundation. You can sign up for email alerts to keep yourself inf...
Apr 09, 2024•27 min•Season 6Ep. 8
This week, we’re talking with James Mason, president and senior counsel at the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. Previously, James has served as the president of the Parental Rights Foundation and the host of the EPPiC Broadcast . This week, James tells us about a case in Texas that HSLDA has recently litigated on behalf of a homeschooling family caught up in a CPS investigation. The EPPiC Broadcast is hosted by Michael Ramey, president of the Parental Rights Foundation. You can sign up for ...
Apr 02, 2024•34 min•Season 6Ep. 7
This week, Joanna Woolman returns to the podcast! Joanna is an associate professor of law at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law and the executive director of the Institute to Transform Child Protection . Today, Joanna tells us about a civil rights complaint brought forward to address the disproportionality of African American children in Minnesota's child welfare system, as well as the African American Family Preservation Act, a bill introduced to address the racial disproportionality and provid...
Mar 26, 2024•29 min•Season 6Ep. 6
This week we talk with Will Estrada, senior counsel at the Homeschool Legal Defense Association and former president of the Parental Rights Foundation, as well as the former host of the EPPiC Broadcast. Will has also served as attorney with the Federal Department of Health and Human Services. In this episode, Will tells us about his upcoming law review article, in which he argues that parental rights are a pre-political right, and that the family is a basic building block of society. The EPPiC B...
Mar 19, 2024•48 min•Season 8Ep. 5
This week, we’re talking with Michelle Weidner, executive director of the Family Justice Resource Center in Illinois, which represents families in CPS cases across the country. Michelle is also a parent with lived experience dealing with the child protective system. In this episode, she tells about her experience being falsely accused by a child abuse pediatrician over a blur on her infant son’s medical scan. Michelle also tells about how the Family Justice Resource Center works to reunite paren...
Mar 12, 2024•29 min•Season 8Ep. 4
This week, we're rewinding to a a conversation with Martin Guggenheim from February 2021. In this episode, we talk with Martin Guggenheim, who has taught at the NYU School of Law for over 25 years, and is one of the foremost experts on family law and family rights today. Marty tells us about his lengthy career in the family law field, including how the current child welfare system came to be, and why it’s vitally important that parents receive legal representation in court. Marty also explains h...
Mar 05, 2024•1 hr 8 min
This week, we’re talking with Kelly Fong, author of Investigating Families: Motherhood in the Shadow of Child Protective Services , published in 2023. Kelly is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California Irvine. In this episode, Kelly explains how child protective services exert an inescapable surveillance over many parents, especially low income and minority mothers. During her research, Kelly embedded herself in the child protective system to gain an inside perspective ...
Feb 27, 2024•38 min•Season 8Ep. 3
This week, we’re talking with Matt Sharp, senior legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom. Matt tells us about the Families Rights and Responsibilities Act, recently introduced into the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives that aims to safeguard parental rights and provide parents with strong legal protections at the national level. Matt explains what’s in the bill, why it was created, and what you can do to help support it. The EPPiC Broadcast is hosted by Michael Ramey, president of the...
Feb 20, 2024•29 min•Season 8Ep. 2
Welcome back to the EPPiC Broadcast ! We’re kicking off season 8 with a returning appearance of Diane Redleaf. Diane is the legal consultant at Let Grow , an organization that promotes reasonable childhood independence. She’s also the author of They Took the Kids Last Night . In this episode, Diane tells us what reasonable childhood independence is and why it matters for protecting parental and family rights. Plus hear about her work advocating for families caught up in the child welfare system....
Feb 13, 2024•38 min•Season 8Ep. 1
This week we talk with Will Estrada, senior counsel at the Homeschool Legal Defense Association and former president of the Parental Rights Foundation, as well as the former host of the EPPiC Broadcast. Will has also served as attorney with the Federal Department of Health and Human Services. Today, Will explains some of the parental rights-focused work that HSLDA is currently doing. Plus, hear about what he accomplished during his tenure as president of the Parental Rights Foundation and his pe...
Nov 14, 2023•55 min•Season 7Ep. 15
This week we talk with Kevin Boden, director of HSLDA International. Kevin tells us about the victories and challenges homeschooling is facing internationally. Kevin is the lead attorney for the Romeike family, who came to the US in 2006 after facing legal hardships in Germany for homeschooling their children. Support the show
Nov 07, 2023•44 min•Season 7Ep. 14
This week we talk with Jim Mason, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association and former president of ParentalRights.org and the Parental Rights Foundation. In this episode, Jim explains how homeschooling has grown from its fringe roots in the 70's into an enduring education option today, with abundant resources to help parents best educate their children. He also explains what he believes is next for the homeschooling movement. Support the show...
Oct 31, 2023•48 min•Season 7Ep. 13
This week we talk with Jane Spinak, author of The End of Family Court: How Abolishing the Court Brings Justice to Children and Families . Jane is a Clinical Professor of Law Emerita at Columbia Law School, where she directed clinical programs in family regulation for forty years. In this episode, Jane traces her journey from working to reform the family court system to advocating for its abolishment. She tells us about the history of the family court system, which was created to be benevolent to...
Oct 24, 2023•54 min•Season 7Ep. 12
This week we talk with Michael Farris, constitutional law scholar, founding president of ParentalRights.org, and the former CEO and president of Alliance Defending Freedom . In this episode, Michael responds to a recent Washington Post article about his role in the parental rights movement and gives us an update on the projects he’s been working on recently. Support the show...
Oct 17, 2023•33 min•Season 7Ep. 11
This week, we talk with Joyce McMillian. Joyce is a thought leader, advocate, community organizer, educator, and the Founder and Executive Director of Just Making A Change for Families ( JMACforFamilies ). Joyce walks us through her work advocating for families that find themselves caught up in New York’s child welfare system, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). Black, low income families are targeted by the ACS at a disproportionate rate. Joyce explains what factors play into this...
Oct 10, 2023•54 min•Season 7Ep. 10
This week, we talk with Melissa Moschella, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America, where her teaching focuses on bioethics and the moral and political status of the family. Melissa is also the author of To Whom Do Children Belong? Parental Rights, Civic Education, and Children's Autonomy . Melissa explains her argument that parental rights are pre-governmental and rely on the natural rights of parents, rather than being conferred by the government, and why the fa...
Oct 03, 2023•51 min•Season 7Ep. 9
This week, we talk with Anna Arons. Anna is the Impact Project Director at the New York University Defense Clinic and formerly the acting assistant professor of lawyering at the New York University School of Law. She’s also an assistant professor of law at the Saint John’s University School of Law. In this episode, Anna discusses her law review article, The Empty Promise of the Fourth Amendment in the Family Regulation System . In her article, she explains how the child welfare system unfairly t...
Sep 26, 2023•47 min•Season 7Ep. 8
This week, Michael talks with William Wagner, vice president of the Parental Rights Foundation. William is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of Law at the Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, and founder of Salt and Light Global. William has served as a federal magistrate judge in the U.S. Courts, as Legal Counsel in the U.S Senate, and as Senior Assistant United States Attorney in the Department of Justice. William tells us about his background in constitutional law and how he came t...
Sep 19, 2023•37 min•Season 7Ep. 7
This week, we talk with Erin Phillips, president of Power2Parent, an organization uniting parents who want to advocate for their children’s education. Power2Parent is based in Nevada, but maintains chapters in many states. Erin tells us about recent challenges to parents rights in Nevada that her organization has faced, plus victories in Nevada and across the country. Support the show...
Sep 12, 2023•42 min•Season 7Ep. 6
Vivek Sankaren is a clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, and director of their Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic. He’s authored over three dozen journal and law review articles, including “ The Ties That Bind Us: an Empirical, Clinical, and Constitutional Argument Against Terminating Parental Rights ”. In this episode, Vivek discusses the arguments he makes in his law review article that children are best cared for and protected when ...
Sep 05, 2023•36 min•Season 7Ep. 5
This week, we talk with Jerry Milner, former Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau in the US Department of Health and Human Services. Far too often, the US child welfare system creates incentives to unnecessarily separate families, harming the children it tries to protect. During his tenure with the Children’s Bureau, Jerry worked to create reforms that prioritize family preservation and reunification instead. Now, Jerry serves as the Director of the Family Justice Group. Support the s...
Aug 29, 2023•47 min•Season 7Ep. 4
This week, we talk with Dr. Josh Gupta-Kagan, Professor at Columbia University School of Law and author of “The Hidden Foster Care System.” Josh explains how many parents in child welfare investigations find their children placed with relatives, completely off the official record. While placing children with relatives, sometimes called kinship care, is not an inherently bad thing and can result in good outcomes for families, the severe lack of oversight and documentation in these placements is a...
Aug 22, 2023•45 min•Season 7Ep. 3
This week, we talk with Maxine Eichner. Maxine is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina, and she writes on legal issues surrounding families and social welfare law and policy. In this episode, Eichner explains the history of a concept called “medical child abuse” and how innocent parents of medically complex children can easily find themselves caught up in allegations of child abuse - all because some doctors don’t understand the medical issues their children face....
Aug 15, 2023•50 min•Season 7Ep. 2
Welcome back to the EPPiC Broadcast! We’re kicking off season 7 with Andrew Brown, Associate Vice President of Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. As an attorney, Andrew has represented children in the child welfare system, advocated for the rights of parents, and helped build families through domestic and international adoption. Andrew breaks down some recent major wins for Texas families in the child welfare system. Texas recently passed into law five bills that help families, which ...
Aug 08, 2023•53 min•Season 7Ep. 1
In the final episode of Season 6, we talk with Laura Adams, founder of FACTS4safefamilies.com , which provides education, support, and advocacy to improve understanding of adoptive and foster children and complex trauma. Laura explains how through her work with international adoption and parenting her own adopted children with special needs, she saw firsthand the challenges that exist in getting the proper assessments and support in schools, especially in mental healthcare. Laura is an advocate ...
May 23, 2023•49 min•Season 6Ep. 14
This week, we talk with Erin Phillips, president of Power2Parent , an organization uniting parents who want to advocate for their children’s education. Erin discusses her journey in advocating for her parental rights in her own children’s education and how Power2Parent was formed to give parents in her home state of Nevada and across the country the power to speak up for themselves and their children in our public schools. Support the show...
May 16, 2023•41 min•Season 6Ep. 13
This week, Homeschool Legal Defense Association staff attorney Peter Kamakawiwoole returns to the Eppic Broadcast. Peter tells us about a case that he litigated on behalf of a mom who found herself dealing with an invasive CPS investigation including strip searches of her young children - all because she left her children in the car for a few minutes to buy coffee and muffins. Support the show...
May 09, 2023•45 min•Season 6Ep. 12
This week, we welcome Diane Redleaf back to the Eppic Broadcast. Diane is the author of They Took the Kids Last Night and founder of the Family Defense Center . Diane is working with Let Grow to pass legislation in Virginia and Utah that protects reasonable childhood independence, the idea that children should be able to pursue age-appropriate activities on their own without the threat of their parents being reported for child neglect. Reasonable independence laws have already been passed in Okl...
May 02, 2023•40 min•Season 6Ep. 11
This week, we talk with Patrick Garrison, founder and president of True Corrective , an education curriculum to help parents teach their children about America’s shared principles. Patrick explains what led him to found this curriculum program, including his background as a public school teacher. Plus, he explains how True Corrective can help parents reconnect with their children’s education. Support the show...
Apr 25, 2023•36 min•Season 6Ep. 10
This week, we talk with Dr. Roger Smith, a physician and pediatrician, and author of Parenting with Influence: Shifting Your Parenting Style as You and Your Child Grow . Roger gives a doctor’s perspective on how you as a parent can work best with your child’s pediatrician. Plus, he lays out some principles for how to stay connected with your children as they grow older and mature into adulthood. Support the show...
Apr 18, 2023•39 min•Season 6Ep. 9
