78
Souter, J., concurring in judgment
statute would allow a court to award visitation whenever it thought it could make a better decision than a child's parent had done. See 137 Wash. 2d, at 20, 969 P. 2d, at 31 ("It is not within the province of the state to make significant decisions concerning the custody of children merely because it could make a 'better' decision").2 On that basis in part, the Supreme Court of Washington invalidated the State's own statute: "Parents have a right to limit visitation of their children with third persons." Id., at 21, 969 P. 2d, at 31.
Our cases, it is true, have not set out exact metes and bounds to the protected interest of a parent in the relationship with his child, but Meyer's repeatedly recognized right of upbringing would be a sham if it failed to encompass the right to be free of judicially compelled visitation by "any party" at "any time" a judge believed he "could make a 'better' decision" 3 than the objecting parent had done. The strength of a parent's interest in controlling a child's associates is as obvious as the influence of personal associations on the development of the child's social and moral character. Whether for good or for ill, adults not only influence but may indoctrinate children, and a choice about a child's social companions is not essentially different from the designation of the adults who will influence the child in school. Even a State's considered judgment about the preferable political and religious character of schoolteachers is not entitled
2 As Justice O'Connor points out, the best-interests provision "contains no requirement that a court accord the parent's decision any presumption of validity or any weight whatsoever. Instead, the Washington statute places the best-interest determination solely in the hands of the judge." Ante, at 67.
3 Cf. Chicago v. Morales, 527 U. S. 41, 71 (1999) (Breyer, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) ("The ordinance is unconstitutional, not because a policeman applied this discretion wisely or poorly in a particular case, but rather because the policeman enjoys too much discretion in every case. And if every application of the ordinance represents an exercise of unlimited discretion, then the ordinance is invalid in all its applications").
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