El Paso parents win Supreme Court battle; home-schooling questions remain

The Texas Supreme Court has sided with a family accused of not teaching its children anything while waiting “to be raptured.”

But it didn’t answer larger constitutional questions about whether home-school children must be properly taught.

Friday’s 6-3 decision on technical grounds was a win for Laura and Michael McIntyre, who once educated their nine children in the family’s El Paso motorcycle dealership.

The couple argued that school district officials violated their 14th Amendment rights by attempting to verify that its children were learning.

The district was investigating relatives’ complaints the McIntyre children weren’t being educated because they were waiting for Jesus Christ’s second coming.

Justices remanded the case to lower courts, saying its constitutional questions weren’t educational policy matters. But they didn’t issue an opinion on the overall constitutionality.