Mary Miller’s Bill Protects Parental Rights

Mary Miller’s Bill Protects Parental Rights

Written by David E. Smith

Illinois Congresswoman Mary Miller (R-Taylorville) recently introduced legislation to protect parental rights in response to Illinois’ unprecedented mandate requiring public schools to offer annual mental health screenings for students.

Last year, Governor JB Pritzker signed SB 1560 on July 31, 2025, making Illinois the first state in the nation to require universal mental health screenings for students in grades 3 through 12. The new law went into effect on January 1, 2026.

HB 4714, a companion bill to SB 1560, requires LGBTQ input and involvement in student mental health screenings. Another companion bill, HB 4536, requires teachers to be trained in state-approved trauma practices and mental health standards.

Parents have every reason to be concerned. These mandatory screenings will expose children to ideologically driven evaluations while sidelining parents from decisions that should remain them alone. Just think about it: those who affirm everything that we oppose as Christians will be conducting these s0-called mental health evaluations.

Essentially, the same people who believe boys can become girls will set the standards and screen your children to make sure your children’s beliefs align with theirs. What could go wrong?!

Rep. Miller’s Parents Opt-In Protection Act (H.R. 4986) would require schools to obtain written parental consent before administering surveys or mental health screenings involving sensitive personal information. Rather than forcing parents to navigate an opt-out process, the bill would make opt-in parental permission the default.

“JB Pritzker’s plan to impose invasive ‘mental health screenings’ on kids, forcing parents to jump through hoops to opt out, is ridiculous and unacceptable,” Miller said when introducing the legislation. “My bill will put parents back in charge by requiring written consent before these screenings happen.”

Last year, Illinois Family Institute raised concerns about how these screenings could be used, encouraging parents to opt out of this intrusive initiative and other morally and intellectually corrupting school programs. There are several important questions that parents, grandparents, and pastors should be asking:

Who determines what qualifies as a mental health concern?

Will schools evaluate children through the lens of secular ideologies that reject God’s design for human sexuality?

If a child expresses gender confusion, will parents be fully informed, or will school officials affirm the child’s feelings while excluding the family from the conversation?

Will these screenings respect and honor the religious convictions of the family, or will they impose secular values that reject biblical truth?

If parents object to the school’s assessment and decline its recommended course of action, could that decision be treated as neglect? If so, how might the state respond?

These are not hypothetical questions. They go to the heart of who bears the primary responsibility for raising children. Parents have a God-given responsibility to raise their children and care for their physical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual well-being. Public schools were established to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic—not to conduct psychological evaluations or supplant parental authority.

Given the alarming decline in academic achievement, schools should focus on fulfilling their primary responsibilities rather than expanding into areas that rightly belong to parents. At a minimum, their mission should be laser-focused on ensuring that every student can read at grade level.

To be clear, Rep. Miller’s legislation would not prohibit schools from offering mental health resources. Rather, it restores a fundamental principle: parents—not bureaucrats—should decide whether their children participate in sensitive psychological evaluations at school.

For Illinois families concerned about government overreach into the lives of their children, the Parents Opt-In Protection Act represents an important effort to reaffirm that parents—not bureaucrats—should remain the primary decision-makers in matters affecting their children’s physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative today and ask them to support H.R. 4986, Rep. Mary Miller’s Parents Opt-In Protection Act, which would require written parental consent before the school can administer a mental health screening to a child. Let your federal lawmaker know that you object to our government screening students in order to “help” them align with their definition of “mental health.”