The Arkansas Supreme Court has overturned a state law making it illegal for teachers to have a sexual relationship with students who are at least 18 years old. More:

Attorneys for the state argued the law protects high school students from sexual advances of teachers who are in positions of authority. But the high court found the law was unconstitutional because it criminalized sexual conduct between consenting adults.

“If the child wants to have sex when they are 18 with their teacher, that is fine,” parent Amy Dardenne told Fox 16 News. “They are adults at 18, so they might as well do what they want to do.”

In a dissent, Justice Robert Brown said that the majority’s opinion will cause disruption in high schools because there will be nothing to prevent teachers from having sex with students who are 18 or older.

“This will cause significant disruption in our high schools and have a deleterious impact on education in general and the teacher-student dynamic in particular,” wrote Brown.

The friend who passed this story on to me writes, “Holy cow. In prior ages more sensible than ours, parents would castrate the offender.”

I turned 18 when I was in still in my senior year of high school. In that year, I was of legal drinking age in Louisiana. But when I got caught off campus with booze, I was sent home for a week (it was a residential high school, and the school authorities acted in loco parentis). It was a just penalty. It seems to me that by the reasoning of the Arkansas court, my school ought not to have had the right to punish me for my actions, because I was doing what was perfectly legal for someone my age. If only I had thought to sue the school for violating my rights! If the Louisiana Supreme Court at the time had been as, er, enlightened as the Arkansas justices, perhaps I could have paved the way for subsequent early-birthday students at the school to get liquored up off campus scot-free. At least until the evil federales forced the state legislature to change the drinking age to 21, as they did in 1996. (Joking aside,  I think it’s absurd that you have to be 21 years old to buy a legal beer in this country. But that’s another issue.)

I can’t imagine that parents of 18 year old high school students in Arkansas are feeling good about this ruling. If teacher wants to have sex with their son or daughter, there’s nothing they can do about it under the law, as long as the act was consensual. I can see the court’s reasoning, but I believe that the dissenting justice has the stronger point. There is something unique about a teacher-student relationship.