Cite as: 530 U. S. 57 (2000)
Stevens, J., dissenting
ognizing that children are, generally speaking, constitutionally protected actors require that this Court reject any suggestion that when it comes to parental rights, children are so much chattel. See ante, at 64-65 (opinion of O'Connor, J.) (describing States' recognition of "an independent third-party interest in a child"). The constitutional protection against arbitrary state interference with parental rights should not be extended to prevent the States from protecting children against the arbitrary exercise of parental authority that is not in fact motivated by an interest in the welfare of the child.9
This is not, of course, to suggest that a child's liberty interest in maintaining contact with a particular individual is to be treated invariably as on a par with that child's parents' contrary interests. Because our substantive due process case law includes a strong presumption that a parent will act
Mo. v. Danforth, 428 U. S. 52, 74 (1976) ("Constitutional rights do not mature and come into being magically only when one attains the state-defined age of majority. Minors, as well as adults, are protected by the Constitution and possess constitutional rights"); Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503, 506-507 (1969) (First Amendment right to political speech); In re Gault, 387 U. S. 1, 13 (1967) (due process rights in criminal proceedings).
9 Cf., e. g., Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205, 244-246 (1972) (Douglas, J., dissenting) ("While the parents, absent dissent, normally speak for the entire family, the education of the child is a matter on which the child will often have decided views. He may want to be a pianist or an astronaut or an oceanographer. To do so he will have to break from the Amish tradition. It is the future of the student, not the future of the parents, that is imperiled by today's decision. If a parent keeps his child out of school beyond the grade school, then the child will be forever barred from entry into the new and amazing world of diversity that we have today. . . . It is the student's judgment, not his parents', that is essential if we are to give full meaning to what we have said about the Bill of Rights and of the right of students to be masters of their own destiny"). The majority's disagreement with Justice Douglas in that case turned not on any contrary view of children's interest in their own education, but on the impact of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment on its analysis of school-related decisions by the Amish community.
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