Prairie State Wire

In an anti-climactic conclusion to a months-long legislative battle, Illinois’ controversial Homeschool Act—HB 2827—is officially dead for the 2025 session.

Homeschool advocates from across the political spectrum are celebrating what they call a major victory for educational freedom and parental rights.

Will Estrada, Senior Counsel for the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), who has led the opposition to the bill, called it "the most draconian homeschooling proposal we've fought in at least the last thirty years." 

The legislation, backed by State Rep. Terra Costa Howard (D-Glen Ellyn) and the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), would have introduced sweeping new mandates for homeschoolers—suggesting criminal penalties families who failed to file paperwork and authorizing truancy officers to investigate homeschool households.

“The bill was just so draconian,” Estrada told Prairie State Wire. “There has not been a single attempt in any other state in at least the past three decades to write a piece of legislation like HB 2827 with automatic criminal penalties. Then when that was dead on arrival, they tried the mandatory referral to the state attorney for prosecution. I mean, the bill was just so draconian, it really sparked a lot of opposition.”

More than 42,000 Illinois residents filed witness slips against the bill. 

On March 19, over 8,000 Illinoisans gathered at the Capitol to protest the measure.

“The homeschool community in Illinois came out in droves,” Estrada said. 

Estrada emphasized that the broad and diverse coalition opposing the bill played a crucial role in halting its progress.

“Grassroots opposition from homeschoolers came from across the political spectrum—Republican, Democrat, religious, atheist—that really made it so legislators were in a very uncomfortable position,” he said.

He argued that the bill's backers relied on misleading stereotypes about who homeschools in America.

“Supporters of HB 2827 pitched the bill as if the only people who are homeschooling are pro-Trump, white Republicans,” Estrada said. “And then when you had Black and Democrat and Asian and Latino homeschoolers coming out saying, wait a minute, we oppose this bill, we are homeschoolers as well, it just really undercut the kind of one-sided, one-dimensional caricature and stereotype of homeschoolers.”

While the bill’s sponsor claimed it aimed to protect children, critics argued it relied on misleading assumptions and fostered undue state intrusion into private education. 

Estrada highlighted the role of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), which he characterized as a fringe organization with extreme, anti-family views. 

“I think it's a very simple agenda,” Estrada said. “It's a pro-authoritarian, anti-family, and anti-parent agenda. I mean, it's one that we've seen lurking around, particularly in academia. You have James Dwyer, a professor at William & Mary, who actually has publicly said every parent should have a background check before they take their child home from the hospital.” 

“It's Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard professor who in 2020 published a law review article calling for homeschooling to be presumptively banned by the government. I mean, these are crazy wackos, and Coalition for Responsible Home Education—that is their mindset.”

He pointed to a 2022 document on CRHE’s website titled the Parental Rights Extremism Messaging Guide, which he claimed portrays homeschooling parents as extremists. 

According to Estrada, the guide reflects the organization's belief that simply choosing to homeschool is inherently dangerous or radical.

“They talk about millions of children in danger because of homeschooling and parental rights,” he said. “It is such a crazy, tone-deaf, irrational document that I still can't believe they have it on their webpage.”

Estrada also noted that larger groups, like teachers' unions, largely stayed silent on HB 2827—a factor that may have contributed to its defeat. 

“If the teachers’ unions had gotten behind the bill, it would have been a much harder battle to fight,” he said. “But the teachers’ unions were surprisingly quiet on HB 2827.”

The bill had previously missed the March 18 crossover deadline, was sent back to the House Rules Committee in April and never re-emerged before the legislature adjourned late Sunday night. 

While Estrada had remained cautiously optimistic in May that the bill was dead, he never ruled out the possibility of it returning through procedural maneuvers.

The timing of the bill’s demise holds symbolic weight. 

It comes during the centennial of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the 1925 U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming that “the child is not the mere creature of the state."