The Supreme Court made a decision Monday to “give new vigor” to parental rights to raise their families without interference from the government.

The 6-3 decision stated that a Washington court went too far by letting grandparents have visitation rights in the case of Gary and Jenifer Troxel. The couple went to court to gain visitation time with their dead son’s children, which had been denied by his widow.

A great deal has been done to assure grandparents in the other 49 states that their rights to see their grandchildren are not immediately in jeopardy, only those in Washington, according to the Associated Press.

The basis for this is that the decision was made in direct concern to a portion of the Washington law that granted any person, whether related or not, the right to gain visitation rights with a child at the courts’ discretion.

“So long as a parent adequately cares for his or her children … there will normally be no reason for the state to inject itself into the private realm of the family to further question the ability of that parent to make the best decisions concerning the rearing of that parent’s children,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in the court’s main opinion.

Good enough, and certainly strangers should not be able to sue to see our children, but the ruling conglomerates 60 million grandparents in with all “persons outside the nuclear family,” making them no better than interlopers. Michael Adams of the American Civil Liberties Union told AP that the decision deals “a serious blow to outside interference in family matters.”

Any decision by the Supreme Court that limits the rights of grandparents in one state can and will be used in other states to undermine the right of grandparents to see their grandchildren.

Now, granted the state should not be stepping into the private business of families on a regular basis with an alarming disregard for their basic human rights.

Civil matters do arise, however. We can all stand back and say we don’t want the government telling us what to do. We are quite sure that many people maintain they want to be left alone to conduct their lives as they see fit until such time as they go to court to sue someone, then everybody is more than happy to make the government interfere in their private business.

When two parties go to court to decide who has a right to custody or visitation, the government is not interfering, it is arbitrating a dispute, and for this there must be guidelines established to cover all eventualities.

Grandparents should not be lumped in with the vast majority of humanity. Grandparents are the next best thing to parents, and each case must be judged on its relative merits. Certainly, if a parent has good reason to keep a child from the grandparents then the court can reinforce that decision. But there are always instances where a bad divorce punishes grandparents unfairly, and the courts should step in then to protect a grandparent’s rights.

Iowa State Daily Editorial Board: Kate Kompas,Greg Jerrett, Heidi Jolivette, Justin Kendall and Tara Payne.