A mother named Lisa Snyder in Irving Township, Michigan has received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services informing her that she is in violation of a law that states that no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year. The problem is, this law is meant to govern day care centers, not regular citizens.
Snyder has been hosting children from several families every morning before school because these parents need to get to their jobs and can’t wait for the school bus to come for their kids. Instead, the children go over to Snyder’s home, where they can play and relax in the hour before the bus arrives to take them to school, which is too far away to walk to.
Obviously, this is an unfair situation, but to be fair, once Governor Jennifer Granholm learned of the situation, she took steps to have the law changed. “We want to protect kids, but the law needs to be reasonable,” said spokeswoman Liz Boyd. “When the governor learned of this, she acted quickly and called the director (of the DHS) personally to ask him to intervene.”
Apparently the Department had been responding to a neighbor’s complaint, or this whole business might never have come to light. But it’s a good thing it did regardless; there are always legacy laws in every state that are holdovers from older times, and it’s frequently the case that they need updating to fit with modern sensibilities. And it’s always a good idea to promote a strong community by supporting altruistic behavior. Let that be a lesson for us all to concern ourselves with the spirit of the law, rather than the letter.
