Montana's new law repeals immunization, building, and reporting rules intended for densely packed public facilities and don't make sense for homeschool settings.
HELENA, Montana (LifeSiteNews) – Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a new law eliminating onerous regulations on families who choose to homeschool their children.
HB 778 repeals the requirement for homeschool parents to keep immunization records on their children and submit them with county superintendents, as requiring immunization against communicable diseases for public school was predicated on many children being in close proximity for extended periods of time, something that does not apply to homeschooling.
It also eliminates requirements for homeschool families’ homes – private residences – to meet the same health and safety codes as school buildings and makes homeschoolers and private schools two separate legal categories.
“For Montana families who homeschool, HB 778 is more than just a policy update, it’s a shift toward recognizing and respecting the unique nature of home education,” wrote Traci Taylor of Mix 97.1. “By cutting unnecessary red tape and clearly separating homeschools from nonpublic schools, the law supports educational freedom while still ensuring students get a solid education.”
Roughly 3.1 million students were homeschooled in the United States as of 2022, and on average “score 15 to 25 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests,” according to data collected by the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI).
Homeschooling is only lightly regulated in most states, yet the practice is a recurring target of left-wing activists who view children as ultimately belonging to the state and consider it one of the most important functions of government-run schools to inculcate them with prevailing secular orthodoxy, replacing the “regressive” values of their families.
The indoctrination of children with radical sexual ideologies and other left-wing agenda items has long been a major concern in American public schools, from libraries to athletic and restroom policy to drag events to classroom materials to even socially “transitioning” troubled children without parental knowledge or consent. Many schools have also displayed hostility to the rights and employment of individual teachers who refuse to go along with such agendas, regardless of their treatment of or rapport with gender-confused students.
This has driven even more families to pursue homeschooling in recent years. “The homeschool population had been growing at an estimated 2% to 8% per annum over the past several years, but it grew drastically from 2019-2020 to 2020-2021,” NHERI noted.
In April, Gianforte also signed laws to exclude biological males from women’s restrooms, lockers, and showers, and to limit school athletic programs mean for girls to actual girls. The following month, he repealed a mandate for “gender balance and proportional representation of minorities” in filling state government vacancies, effectively eliminating DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) ideology from state hiring; and most recently he banned activist banners such as LGBT “pride” flags from flying at government buildings.
