Office of Leon R.

Koziol
1518 Genesee Street
Utica, NY 13502
Phone: (315) 796-4000
leonkozioljd@gmail.com

Andrew Rosenthal
Opinion Page Editor December 1, 2010
New York Times

Dear Mr. Rosenthal: Re: Guest Column

In April, 2008, the New York court system brought action against the other branches of
government demanding pay raises. Predictably, the court system won because its lawsuit was
filed in its own courts. The losers then ignored the final judgment, maintaining that the judiciary
had exceeded its constitutional powers over the other branches where the People had vested
budgetary authority.

A host of anomalies followed along with a dangerous precedent for constituents. When two-
thirds of an elected government declares void the edicts of its courts, residents are invited to do
the same under the human rights provisions of both the federal and state constitutions. The Ninth
and Tenth Amendments provide additional legal authority for this.

Certain rights are deemed inalienable, and our supreme laws can contemplate no greater
protection than the liberty of parents to raise their offspring. Unfortunately, like the pay raise
fiasco, New York’s court system has been exceeding its powers by trampling all over this right
in its own tribunals.

The transgression carries far greater implications than those associated with annual judicial
salaries of $136,000. State infringements upon parent-child relations produce violations of a full
range of other rights protected by our Constitution. These include free speech, free association,
free religion and privacy interests, among others.

However, not unlike child control doctrines championed by Adolph Hitler, the state simply
declares that it is acting in our children’s “best interests”, and these precious human rights incur
a disappearing act. The magic show has been underway for decades all across America, but wiser
victims are recognizing their domestic courts for what they have become.

Virtually every social ill of our day can be traced to divorce and custody laws which coerce
parents to fight over their own children in public court contests. These needless and barbaric
processes exploit children for profit. Employers, forensic witnesses and entire families are hauled
into them with a collective impact that is harming the productivity of an entire nation.
Andrew Rosenthal
Page two
12/1/10

“Family Court” litigants do not grasp the enormity of rights they surrender when setting out to
compensate strangers at their children’s expense. Like Pavlov’s dogs, they are conditioned to
petition government for the answers to all their parenting failures, only to find that the state is
overburdened, underfinanced and wholly incompetent to raise those same children.

This responsibility remains, as it always has, in the hands of two very distinct persons: a father
and a mother. While many settings do not permit one or both figures, government is rendering
them obsolete. Mainstream parents who simply choose to live apart are lumped together with
unfit characters and forced to prove themselves in search of a gender merged award of “custodial
parent”.

So alien is this state creation that it is empowered to believe that a child is better off with money
than the other parent. Custodial parents across the country are demanding imprisonment of their
natural counterparts simply because an arbitrary federal formula requires greater cash transfers to
the state (support collection unit). The formula has little regard for parental agreement or the
maintenance of a “non-custodial” family unit.

Overriding constitutional reform, judges are finding no issue with debtor prison practices, in
many cases jailing good parents without counsel (the subject of an upcoming Supreme Court
case). Interest revenues are then collected off of mass produced “support” orders to pay for raises
and additional intrusions. When coupled with federal incentive grants, it is plain to see that a
multi-billion dollar child industry has moved our courts well beyond their founding framework.

Transfer payments through power (custody) and money (support) awards comprise the long
antiquated vehicles for generating controversy, fees, revenues and scrutiny of diverse family
units. Unless parents are found to be unfit or dependent on public assistance, the state has no
power under an American form of government to micromanage private affairs.

As a new leadership enters Congress, policymakers would do well to overhaul the welfare
system known as Title IV-D of the Social Security Act. Designed to target absentee fathers, it
was expanded over time to mainstream parents in order to fund the entire system. This socialist
experiment has backfired to produce more costly impacts upon crime, education, our economy
and future generations of Americans.

Very truly yours,

Leon R. Koziol, J.D.

Leon Koziol is a civil rights advocate who has practiced constitutional law for more than 23
years in New York State. Recently, he established the Parenting Rights Institute with a
nationwide support base. For more information, visit him at www.leonkoziol.com.