Opinion ID: 2633550
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Due Process Special Weight and Special Factors Requirements

Text: In Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 120 S.Ct. 2054, 147 L.Ed.2d 49 (2000) (plurality opinion), the Supreme Court reviewed Washington's very broad third-party visitation statute. In regard to grandparent visitation and a parent's fundamental right to the care, custody, and control of his or her children, the Court ruled that due process requires a court to give special weight to the parents' determination: if a fit parent's decision of the kind at issue here becomes subject to judicial review, the court must accord at least some special weight to the parent's own determination. 530 U.S. at 70, 120 S.Ct. 2054 (plurality opinion). The trial court had made an independent determination as to what was in the child's best interest. The case reached the Washington Supreme Court, which consolidated the case with two other cases and concluded that the state's visitation statute unconstitutionally infringed on the fundamental rights of parents to rear their children. The grandparents appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court affirmed the judgment of the Washington Supreme Court and held that the visitation order, as applied, unconstitutionally infringed on the mother's parenting rights. Troxel, 530 U.S. at 67, 120 S.Ct. 2054 (plurality opinion). The Court's plurality opinion authored by Justice O'Connor noted several features of the Washington statute and the trial court's order as impacting its conclusion. First, the Court described the statute as breathtakingly broad because it allowed any person to petition for visitation at any time. Id. Second, the statute and the trial court's interpretation of it accorded no deference to a parent's decision that visitation would not be in the child's best interests. Id. Thus, the judge could solely determine the best interests of the child. Id. Third, the trial court had not based the visitation order on any special factors that might justify the State's interference with [the mother's] fundamental right to make decisions concerning the rearing of her two daughters. Id. at 68, 120 S.Ct. 2054. The Court then turned its attention to the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution. Id. Fit parents, the Court said, are presumed to act in the best interests of their children, id. (plurality opinion); see id. at 86, 120 S.Ct. 2054 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (agreeing with this portion of the plurality opinion), and the trial court had not found the mother to be an unfit parent. Accordingly, so long as a parent adequately cares for his or her children ( i.e., is fit), 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. Id. at 68-69, 120 S.Ct. 2054. The Court faulted the trial court for not only failing to give special weight to the mother's decision, but for placing the burden on the mother to show that visitation would not be in her child's best interests. The Court then announced a due process special weight requirement. [I]f a fit parent's decision of the kind at issue here becomes subject to judicial review, the court must accord at least some special weight to the parent's own determination. Id. at 70, 120 S.Ct. 2054 (plurality opinion). The Court restricted its decision to an as applied consideration and declined to address whether the Due Process Clause requires all nonparental visitation statutes to include a showing of harm or potential harm to the child as a condition precedent to granting visitation. [3] Id. at 73, 120 S.Ct. 2054. How Colorado courts implement the Troxel due process special weight and special factors requirements in considering and issuing orders under Colorado's grandparent visitation statute remained undefined until the court of appeals issued the decision we review in this case. In its decision, the court of appeals reviewed the decisions of other states that have applied the special weight requirement and identified two prevailing approaches. R.A. II, 121 P.3d at 298. The first approach urged by the Grandparentssimply alters the weighing process by which trial courts balance multiple factors related to a `best interests of the child' analysis. Id. The second approachurged by the Parents accord[s] extreme deference to parental wishes, and overrides parental wishes only if the parent is unfit to make the decision or when denying visitation would harm or substantially harm the child's emotional health. Id. Citing the Oklahoma case of In re Herbst, 1998 OK 100, 971 P.2d 395, 399 (1998), the court of appeals concluded that, in the case of fit parents and absent a showing of harm or the threat thereof, it is not for the State to choose which associations a family must maintain and which the family is permitted to abandon. Id. at 299. Nonetheless, the court of appeals acknowledged a difference in type of harm experienced between children separated from grandparents who play only a secondary or companionate role in their lives, in contrast to those children who are separated from grandparents who play a primary or quasi-parental role in their lives. Id. Having chosen the actual or threatened emotional harm to the child standard, the court of appeals then found in this case that no evidence was presented indicating that the child would experience significant or substantial emotional harm in the absence of court ordered visitation. Id. at 300. Accordingly, it vacated the magistrate's grandparent visitation order. Id. at 301. We disagree with the court of appeals on both points upon which it relied in vacating the magistrate's order for grandparent visitation. First, Troxel did not require a standard of significant or substantial emotional harm to the child; rather, Troxel requires that a court (1) give special weight to the parental determination and (2) identify those special factors upon which its grandparent visitation order is based. 530 U.S. at 70, 120 S.Ct. 2054. Second, in dismissing the Grandparents' petition, the court of appeals ignored evidence in this record that the child and the Grandparents had established a bond of affection and care forged in the first four years of the child's life and reinforced when the child's father died. We now turn to the appropriate Colorado standard for implementing Troxel and the grandparent visitation statute.