By Any Other Name: Henne v. Wright

Abstract

INTRODUCTION|A war is being fought in the courts between the state desiring to protect children from their parents and parents desiring to control the raising of their children. This war has had many memorable battles: Meyer v. Nebraska affirmed the parents' control over what may be taught in school; Pierce v. Society of Sisters affirmed the parents' right to send their children to private school; Jehovah's Witnesses v. King County Hospital affirmed the state's right to give a child medical treatment against the parent's judgment. Henne v. Wright is admittedly a skirmish in a war of great battles; however, the values at stake in this case are a parents right to make choices for her child and a state's right to limit those choices to meet its own goals. |Debra Henne and Linda Spidell each wanted to choose a surname for their newborn daughters however, their choices violated a Nebraska statute. The statute required that the surname entered on the birth certificate have a parental connection. The laws of Nebraska did not prevent the parent's choice of surname if they were willing to either first change their own name, or change their child's name once a conforming name was entered on the certificate. Courts have found it easier to sympathize with parents than with state record keepers, and at the district court level the Nebraska statute requiring a surname with a parental connection was declared unconstitutional...