Court Overrules Father’s Grounding of Daughter

It may sound like something out of the Onion, but in fact it’s only Canada:

A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl’s grounding, overturning her father’s punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting “inappropriate” pictures of herself online using a friend’s computer.

The father’s lawyer Kim Beaudoin said the disciplinary measures were for the girl’s “own protection” and is appealing the ruling.

“She’s a child,” Beaudoin told AFP. “At her age, children test their limits and it’s up to their parents to set boundaries.”

According to court documents, the girl’s Internet transgression was just the latest in a string of broken house rules. Even so, Justice Suzanne Tessier found her punishment too severe.

Beaudoin noted the girl used a court-appointed lawyer in her parents’ 10-year custody dispute to launch her landmark case against dear old dad.

Actually, one shouldn’t blame Canada too much for this. I’m sure that many similar, silly (if not similarly silly) decisions have issued from U.S. family courts as well, and once the government gets involved deciding marital and custody disputes, this sort of intrusion and interference with parental authority is all but inevitable. Which is the main reason why lovers of liberty ought to favor stable, traditional families, and hate divorce.