Crosstalk: November 22, 2016

Anmarie Calgaro is a Minnesota mother fighting for parental rights.

Last week, Anmarie filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal district court to restore her 14th Amendment constitutional due process rights which she believes have been violated.

The story begins when Anmarie let her son go to live with his father when he was 15. At that time her son received a notice of emancipation from a legal aid group that helps low income individuals. With that notice her son was able to get his driver's license and enroll himself back into the school he didn't want to be in.

Last year he began to receive transgender drug transition services without Anmarie's consent, although she made it clear this lawsuit is not about the transition. Instead, this lawsuit is about Anmarie having her parental rights removed without notification or court order.

In Minnesota there's no law for or against emancipation. So instead of questioning either Anmarie or her son to find out if the information he was giving them was correct, the aid group simply supplied her son with the emancipation paper. There was no court order/declaration signed off by a judge that emancipated her son. In fact, Anmarie noted that when her son tried to use the emancipation paper to change his name in 2 counties, the judges denied the request based on his status as a minor.

It was stated that her son had a common law right to seek emancipation so Jim wondered if she could use common law to reclaim her parental rights. Anmarie responded by noting that Minnesota has no common law that allows her to challenge this. So while the media is trying to spin this by pushing the transgender angle, her goal is to simply have a bill proposed so that others won't have to lose their parental rights.