When Schools Overreach: A Father’s Battle for Religious Freedom and Parental Rights
A fight is under way in a quiet corner of California about values, rights, and the very core of parental authority in public education—not over budgets or textbooks. After his 11-year-old kid returned home from school emotionally disturbed, Carlos Encinas, a father from the La Costa Heights community, found himself thrown into a cultural and legal struggle. The source was a children’s book called “My Shadow is Pink,” which tells about gender identification and self-acceptance, and it dominated a classroom session.
Some might find this to be a wonderful story of tolerance. For others, like Carlos, it marks a clear overreach by the educational system into areas rightly belonging to families and their religious traditions. Like millions of Americans, the Encinas family are serious Christians that teach the immutability of biological sex. This was not for them only a book reading. It was a forced interaction with a philosophy they essentially detest.
They are not being quiet about it either.
The Book Starting a Legal Action
There is no typical children’s book like “My Shadow is Pink.” Its vibrant images and rhyming language send a strong message: that a youngster can be born male but identify as female—or vice versa—and that such self-perceptions should be praised and honored. The father in the narrative supports his son’s cross-gender identity, therefore highlighting the main point of the book: parental affirmation of non-biological identity is not only good but also morally required.
It is a tale of sympathy for secular progressives. For Carlos Encinas, it is indoctrination wrapped in a colorful bow.
Carlos realized something was very wrong when his kid returned home unhappy and described not only the reading of the book but also a linked school exercise where pupils were asked to choose colors reflecting their identity. Permission had not been sought by the institution. Opt-out forms had not been available. And his naive, naïve pre-teen kid was suddenly placed into an ideological exercise based on a viewpoint that ran counter to all he had been taught at home.
Carlos felt this was not instruction. Coercion is what this was.
Classroom Forced Expression
What followed just heightened the family’s worries. Carlos’s son was assigned a kindergarten “buddy” for the classroom project. Using sidewalk chalk—symbolized by their selected colors—the two were invited to work together, expressing their identities. The underlying lesson was clear: even if it runs counter to your genetics, express your own self—that internal identity.
The lad felt very overwhelmed emotionally. He lacked the words to question what he was being told. In a school where dissent was discouraged, he had no idea how to defend his views. Worst of all, he was made to feel as though his non-acceptance of the offered worldview set him apart.
This is the sneaky way that indoctrination works—it usually passes for inclusiveness and marginalizes criticism.
Carlos’s son was asked to participate in an idea, to articulate it, to embrace it, and not only to listen to it. That, Carlos argues, violates his child’s rights as well as his own as a father.
Turning Stories into Strategy: Multimedia Indoctrination
Worse still, the school did not stop at merely reading the text. Viewed on a video, “My Shadow is Pink” featured vibrant animations, calm narration, and emotionally poignant music for the students. These days, this form of multimedia narrative is about emotional impact rather than only amusement. The message of the book was made even stronger, more persuasive, and more immersive using these graphic methods.
Carlos compares the encounter to psychological manipulation. Children are emotionally conditioned rather than merely taught by having an ideological message wrapped in beautiful images and sounds. Emotional involvement used to support one limited perspective erases the boundary separating education from indoctrination.
Carlos contends—especially when youngsters have no way to opt out, no opportunity to question the message, and no parental guidance during the experience—that it’s not unlike propaganda.
The legal struggle for parental rights
Carlos has not backed down in the face of this injustice. He brought his case before a court, teaming with the national legal group First Liberty Institute to preserve religious freedom. Along with attorney Kayla Toney, Carlos sued the school system, claiming that his constitutional rights under the First Amendment had been violated.
There is no political leaning to the lawsuit. Rooted in fundamental American values—the right of parents to raise their children according to their faith and the freedom from forced speech and expression—it is Fundamentally, the case raises a difficult question: who—the parents or the government—gets to determine what a child believes?
Kayla Toney stressed that there is nothing regarding book bans in this case. It is about openness, choice, and the respect due to families whose values do not coincide with the secular orthodoxy now ruling public education.
She also is correct. Carlos’s struggle is not unique here. This is America.
The First Amendment and the Educational Setting
Legally speaking, Carlos’s case activates strong constitutional rights. The First Amendment ensures free exercise of religion in addition to freedom of speech. Schools cannot thus compel children to participate in speech—or expressive activities—that run counter to their strongly held religious views.
Furthermore, the courts have long understood that parents have a basic right to guide the upbringing and education of their children. That covers their right to be sheltered from ideas they find objectionable.
So why, in so many public schools, are these rights being disregarded when it comes to gender identity and sexual ideology?
Kayla Toney notes a clear discrepancy: schools often let students choose not to participate in some academic events—like dissecting animals in biology class—based on ethical or religious concerns. Why then cannot parents choose to have their children excluded from gender instruction?
The response comes from a political standpoint. The new theology of identity politics is thought to be too holy to challenge, too vital to overlook. Families’ rights are so crushed in the name of “progress.”
A National Pattern of Excessive Reach
Carlos’s background is not a one-off occurrence. Parents are waking up all throughout America, realizing they have no influence over the education of their children. Public schools are incorporating gender ideology into every level of the curriculum, from Washington State to New Jersey, from California to Florida, usually without telling parents.
Early school environments make increasing use of books, including “My Shadow is Pink,” “Jacob’s New Dress,” and “I Am Jazz.” Lesson plans call for gender identity art projects, pronoun announcements, and role-playing exercises pushing kids to explore identities outside of their biology.
Many schools assert that these teachings foster inclusivity. Still, inclusiveness should never come before conviction. Schools are proselytizing rather than merely teaching when they implement activist curricula without first consulting parents.
Parents also are beginning to object.
The Part Faith Plays in the Fight
Carlos’s drive comes from sources outside politics. It comes from faith. According to his Christian perspective, God created men and women, and the binary is spiritual rather than only biological. In his perspective, exposing his son to an ideology that rejects this fact violates conscience and compromises his son’s moral growth.
Millions of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and non-religious conservative families all throughout the nation share this viewpoint. School boards and media elites sometimes discount such viewpoints as “intolerant” or “backward.” Still, they form the pillar of the American family.
Parents all around could find encouragement in Carlos’s bravery to remain steadfast in the face of adversity. It reminds us that faith is a basis to be defended; it is not something to be hidden.
The Cultural Gap: Child Owner?
This problem is really a more general cultural one: who finally controls the moral growth of a child?
Progressive campaigners and some teachers contend that schools should lead, particularly if parents have “problematic” opinions. They contend that public education has to be in line with state interests, which includes determining how the next generation views gender, color, and identity.
America was not established on, though, what that suggests.
Founded on liberty—individual, religious, and parental—the American experiment was It is not merely unconstitutional—that is, tyrannical—that the state can supersede the views of a parent.
The situation of Carlos reminds us that our children are not state wards. They are not blank slates ready to be shaped by social engineers and bureaucrats. People are created by the love, morals, and faith of their families. Furthermore, every effort to weaken that holy link betrays American values.
An Invitation to Action for Conservative Families
Although Carlos Encinas might have started the case, every one of us owns this fight. Families based on faith and conservatives have to understand what is at risk. This goes beyond a book here. It relates to the survival of religious freedom, the integrity of the family, and the direction of education.
Right now is the moment to act.
Show up for board meetings of schools. Check over your child’s course of study. Want openness. Advocate opt-out rules. Choose leaders that uphold parental rights. Back freedom-fighting legal groups like First Liberty Institute.
There is no choice in silence. Beginning with your children, the left is orderly, financially supported, and resolved to reweave the moral fabric of society. Should conservative families fail to challenge now, the classroom will turn into a battlefield of compromised principles and denied rights.
The Way Forward
Carlos’s case moves through the courts and may set a standard for years to come. Will America confirm the rights of parents to guide their moral instruction for their children? Alternatively, will we keep traveling down a road where families are compelled to cooperate and bureaucrats define identity?
The response rests on our shoulders.
Not because he desired a fight but more because he had no choice, Carlos Encinas got up. His youngster called for a defender. The faith of his family yearned for expression. And thousands of others also do now.
This transcends a mere legal conflict. One has a moral posture here. a reckoning with culture. And maybe at a turning point.
Hopefully the nation and the judges make sensible decisions.
