IRVING TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Each day before the school bus comes to pick up the neighborhood’s children, Lisa Snyder did a favor for three of her fellow moms, welcoming their children into her home for about an hour before they left for school.
Regulators who oversee child care, however, don’t see it as charity. Days after the start of the new school year, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that if she continued, she’d be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers.
So this woman is looking after kids her friends’ kids, for free, for a little while before they get on the bus and their state government says that it’s illegal for her to do so? Um, wtf? So, considering how many kids are over playing at my house at any given moment does that make me an unlicensed day care center? I think there might be some kind of document or law somewhere guaranteeing the rights of people to gather. Now what was that thing called again? Hmm… oh yeah! The United States Constitution!
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Yeah, I think that’s one of the big ones. The state is scrambling to get an exception to this law because they, as well as everyone else, know that it’s a big steaming pile of government overextending its reach. This is the problem with legislators… they’re so busy trying to make new legislation so it looks like they’re doing something that they don’t consider the ramifications of the laws they pass. I think Lisa Snyder could easily take this case to a higher court and get the entire law overturned. In fact, I would love to see that happen.
