Opinion ID: 876948
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Constitutionality of the Neglect Statute As Applied

Text: The mother's first contention is that section 10-1301(2)(a) and (b), R.C.M. 1947, now section 41-3-102(2)(a) and (b) MCA, was unconstitutionally applied to terminate her parental rights. Her argument is that because section 10-1301(2), which defines abuse and neglect, fails to state any specific harms to a child which might justify termination of parental rights, it is subject to overly-broad interpretation and arbitrary application. She contends that in this case the child is not suffering any particular harm which requires state intervention into family life but that the State merely perceives that the child would be better off in some home other than her natural mother's. This, she asserts, is an inadequate justification for termination of her parental rights. This Court has recognized that family integrity is a constitutionally protected interest. Guardianship of Doney (1977), Mont., 570 P.2d 575, 577, 34 St.Rep. 1107, 1110. As the United States Supreme Court held in Stanley v. Illinois (1972), 405 U.S. 645, 651, 92 S.Ct. 1208, 1212-13, 31 L.Ed.2d 551, 558-59: The Court has frequently emphasized the importance of the family. The rights to conceive and to raise one's children have been deemed `essential,' Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399, 43 S.Ct. 625, 626, 67 L.Ed. 1042 (1923), `basic civil rights of man,' Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541, 62 S.Ct. 1110, 1113, 86 L.Ed. 1655 (1942), and `[r]ights far more precious ... than property rights,' May v. Anderson, 345 U.S. 528, 533, 73 S.Ct. 840, 843, 97 L.Ed. 1221 (1953). `It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder.' Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166, 64 S.Ct. 438, 442, 88 L.Ed. 645 (1944). The integrity of the family unit has found protection in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Meyer v. Nebraska, supra, 262 U.S. at 399, 43 S.Ct. [625] at 626, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Skinner v. Oklahoma, supra, 316 U.S. at 541, 62 S.Ct. [1110] at 1113, and the Ninth Amendment, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 496, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965) (Goldberg, J., concurring). The mother contends that section 10-1301(2) will inadequately protect these constitutional interests if it is interpreted to authorize a termination of her rights as a parent in this case. The statute itself merely defines abuse or neglect: (2) `Abuse' or `neglect' means: (a) the commission or omission of any act or acts which materially affect the normal physical or emotional development of a youth. Any excessive physical injury, sexual assault, or failure to thrive, taking into account the age and medical history of the youth, shall be presumed to be nonaccidental and to `materially affect' the normal development of the youth. (b) the commission or omission of any act or acts by any person in the status of parent, guardian, or custodian who thereby and by reason of physical or mental incapacity or other cause refuses or, with state and private aid and assistance is unable, to discharge the duties and responsibilities for proper and necessary subsistence, education, medical, or any other care necessary for the youth's physical, moral, and emotional well-being. Since a finding of abuse or neglect however gives the District Court jurisdiction to terminate parental rights, Guardianship of Doney, 570 P.2d at 577, 34 St.Rep. at 1110, the meaning applied to it is the parent's only safeguard against unjustified intrusion into the family unit. To illustrate her contention, the mother contrasts the relatively unspecific terms contained in section 10-1301(2) with the more precise standards proposed by the Institute of Judicial Administration-American Bar Association Joint Commission on Juvenile Justice Standards in its Standards Relating to Abuse and Neglect (Tentative Draft 1977) (IJA/ABA standards). The IJA/ABA proposals are based upon a strong presumption for parental autonomy in child rearing, and limit coercive intervention to protect children only where the child is suffering or there is a substantial likelihood that the child will suffer, serious harm. IJA/ABA Standards 1.1 and 1.3(A). The IJA/ABA proposals seek to avoid unnecessary or unjustified intrusions into family integrity by closely defining the grounds for intervention in terms of specific, objective, serious harm to the child. For example, a court may order in-home supervision or remove a child from his or her parents if: A child has suffered, or there is a substantial risk that the child will imminently suffer, physical harm causing disfigurement, impairment of bodily functioning, or other serious physical injury as a result of conditions created by his/her parents or by the failure of the parents to adequately supervise or protect him/her; A child is suffering serious emotional damage, evidenced by severe anxiety, depression, or withdrawal, or untoward aggressive behavior toward self or others, and the child's parents are not willing to provide treatment for him/her. IJA/ABA Standards 2.1(B) and (C). The rationale behind these standards is particularly important to the mother's position because the District Court's findings focused principally on emotional rather than physical neglect of her daughter: ... the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services was required to place this very young child in foster homes partially because of the child's physical needs but mostly because the emotional development of the child was so lacking that the only chance for the child to have a reasonable future was to place the child in a home able to provide for its physical and emotional needs. (Emphasis added.) As the mother points out, vague abuse and neglect statutes often result in arbitrary application when the parents involved in the alleged neglect are poor and uneducated. Katz, Ambrosino, McGrath & Sawitsky, Legal Research on Child Abuse & Neglect: Past and Future, 11 Fam.L.Q. 151, 172-75 (1977); Wald, State Intervention on Behalf of Neglected Children: Standards for Removal of Children from Their Homes, Monitoring the Status of Children in Foster Care, and Termination of Parental Rights, 28 Stan.L.Rev. 623 (1976) (Wald II); Wald, State Intervention on Behalf of Neglected Children: A Search for Realistic Standards, 27 Stan.L.Rev. 985 (1975) (Wald I); Areen, Intervention Between Parent and Child: A Reappraisal of the State's Role in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases, 63 Geo.L.J. 887, 917-32 (1975) (Areen). It is likely however that the greatest percentage of child neglect cases involve matters similar to the present one in which the alleged neglect results not from the deliberate design of a parent, but rather from the parent's low mental or emotional capacity and low financial status. Wald I at 1020-21; Areen at 888; Dembitz, Welfare Home Visits: Child versus Parents, 57 A.B.A.J. 871 (1971). Parents in this category are sometimes described as marginal people: ... they are continually at the borderline of being able to sustain themselves  economically, emotionally, and mentally. Wald I at 1021. As Beatrice Fournier described the mother in this case, Well, I think [the mother] is going to have a hard enough time to take care of herself. A parent's ability to care for himself or herself naturally affects his or her ability to provide a stable, supportive home for a child. Such parents may provide little emotional support for their children. While the children may not be physically abused, left unattended, dangerously malnourished, or overtly rejected, they may receive little love, attention, stimulation, or emotional involvement. Wald I at 1021. The United States Supreme Court has recently observed that middle-class social workers tend to favor long term foster placement for children of such families, thus reflecting a bias that treats the natural parents' poverty and lifestyle as prejudicial to the best interests of the child. Smith v. Organization of Foster Families for Equality & Reform (1977), 431 U.S. 816, 832, 97 S.Ct. 2094, 2105, 53 L.Ed.2d 14, 29 (citing, Rein, Nutt & Weiss, Foster Family Care: Myth and Reality, in Children and Decent People 24, 25-29 (A. Schorr ed. 1974)). Yet, the mother contends poverty and its various attendant lifestyles must not be equated with neglect absent some showing of actual or imminent harm to the child. See Wald I at 1001-02; Wald II at 649-50; Areen at 925-28, 930-32. This Court has held that the State may not terminate a parent's right to raise his or her own child merely because a district judge or a state agency might feel that a nonparent has more financial resources or pursues a `preferable' lifestyle. Guardianship of Doney, 570 P.2d at 578, 34 St.Rep. at 1110. Beyond that principle, however, it is more difficult to say what is the minimum constitutionally acceptable standard for such an extreme intervention into family integrity. The IJA/ABA standards, which remain in tentative draft form, might provide a policy measure by which to evaluate the adequacy of section 10-1301(2), but they represent only one proposal. Other proposals are equally available for our consideration. Areen for example, has proposed a standard for neglect which is deliberately less specific than the proposed IJA/ABA standards, especially in the area most relevant to this case, emotional neglect: A `neglected' child is one whose physical or emotional health is significantly impaired, or is in danger of being significantly impaired, as a result of the action or inaction of his parent, guardian, or primary caretaker. Areen at 933. While this standard, like the IJA/ABA proposal, focuses the attention of the court on the condition of the child rather than on parental fault, it deliberately avoids listing specific evidences of emotional damage such as severe anxiety, depression, withdrawal, and untoward aggressive behavior. The reason, which is of obvious importance here, is a lack of adequate consensus among child behavior experts as to what behavior symptoms indicate emotional deprivation. Areen at 933. A totally different approach is found in the Model Statute for Termination of Parental Rights (MSTPR), prepared by the Neglected Children Committee of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. See, 27 Juv.Just. No. 4, 3, 7 (1976). The MSTPR directs the court to consider the parent's fitness directly rather than look for specific evidence of harm to the child. Section 12(1)(a), for example, requires the court to consider the emotional illness, mental illness or mental deficiency of the parent, of such duration or nature as to render the parent unlikely to care for the ongoing physical, mental and emotional needs of the child. (Emphasis added.) In a preface to the MSTPR, its authors, judges from several states, note that they have not been isolated from nor unmindful of the cross currents of the behavioral sciences which have preoccupied this nation in recent years. 27 Juv.Just. at 3. Yet as judges, they continue, they have been able to test these theoretical fermentations against the realities of their day-to-day practice. 27 Juv.Just. at 3-4. The Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has responded more directly to the IJA/ABA proposed standards, concluding that they offer entirely inadequate protection to children: This lengthy volume needs drastic revision in that it totally disregards the rights of a child to be protected and safe in his home environment. These standards greatly limit the process by which a neglected or abused child may be protected through the juvenile justice system. There is an attempt by the authors to restrict the interference of society in the upbringing of children. While this is obviously a worthwhile goal, there needs to be a balance so that youngsters can be adequately protected from the physical and mental abuse and neglect of parents. 8 Juvenile and Family Court Newsletter, No. 6 at 9 (1978). Thus, the IJA/ABA tentative draft proposals which the mother relies on lack not only a consensus of support among child behavior experts, Areen at 933, but are considered inadequate by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. While it is not this Court's position to declare whether one proposal or another is a better approach, we can say with some confidence that the IJA/ABA proposal is not the only constitutional approach. The proceedings in this case need not be measured against the IJA/ABA model and rejected on constitutional due process grounds if they fail to meet its strict standards. See, State v. McMaster (1971), 259 Or. 291, 486 P.2d 567, 569. Our past decisions indicate that section 10-1301(2) is not so broadly interpreted as to permit termination of parental rights merely because the courts or the concerned social welfare agency disapprove of the parents' lifestyles. See, Guardianship of Doney, 570 P.2d at 578, 34 St.Rep. at 1110; Matter of Fisher (1976), 169 Mont. 254, 258-59, 545 P.2d 654, 656. On the other hand, the statute is broad enough to include emotional deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and extreme and prolonged uncleanliness of the child under the definition of neglect. Matter of J.J.S. (1978), Mont., 577 P.2d 378, 380-81, 35 St.Rep. 394, 395, 397. See also, Matter of Henderson (1975), 168 Mont. 329, 332, 542 P.2d 1204, 1205-06. In the present case the District Court's finding of poor emotional development of the child was based on the testimony of several qualified witnesses. The record does not show that the mother deliberately refused to provide emotional support for her daughter. Rather, the social welfare workers who attempted to help her testified that the mother was simply incapable of caring for her daughter, physically as well as emotionally. Thus, this case involves not so much a legal due process problem of notice to the mother of what behavior was expected of her or what she could do to have her daughter returned to her, but rather a human problem of a mother's inability to understand her child's needs and to realistically provide for them. We are aware that the mother may have received conflicting instructions, especially regarding discipline of her child. However, an overall reading of the testimony indicates that the mother's problem went beyond these apparent conflicts, for she was not even capable of understanding or retaining simple instructions in the first place. The mother's condition, which was described to this Court as borderline mentally retarded, presents a special problem which courts in other states have recently considered. The New York Family Court, in Guardianship of Strausberg (1977), 92 Misc.2d 620, 400 N.Y.S.2d 1013, dealt with the same sort of condition as we face here: A summary of the expert testimony ... showed the respondent to be a borderline retarded person, who under stress is easily confused in her thinking. That at the present time and in the immediate future the respondent has little understanding or capacity to provide the nurturance, structure and controls and fulfill other emotional needs of a developing child. 400 N.Y.S.2d at 1014. The court noted particularly the impending difficulties which would confront parent and child if they were reunited and expressed concern over the time which further attempts at training the mother in child care methods would require: The older the child gets the more difficult it will become for the respondent to fulfill the parental role and provide the direction, structure and other emotional needs of the child herein. The infant ... should not be held in limbo for this indefinite period of time for the purposes of training the respondent in the area of child care. 400 N.Y.S.2d at 1015. On this basis, the court refused to order the child returned to her mother. However, mental deficiencies alone do not justify termination if there is no evidence that the child is in some way harmed or likely to be harmed because of the parent's condition. In construing its termination statute, the Minnesota Supreme Court made this requirement clear: ... we wish to state unequivocally that mental illness in and of itself shall not be classified as `other conduct' which will permit termination of parental rights. Rather, in each case, the actual conduct of the parent is to be evaluated to determine his or her fitness to maintain the parental relationship with the child in question so as to not be detrimental to the child. In re Kidd (Minn. 1978), 261 N.W.2d 833, 835. See also, In re E&B (Utah 1978), 578 P.2d 831, 833-34; In re Telles (1978), 87 Cal. App.3d 864, 151 Cal. Rptr. 263, 266-67; Matter of Fish (1977), Mont., 569 P.2d 924, 926, 34 St.Rep. 1080, 1083-84. In the present case the District Court found that the child was harmed by her mother's failure to provide adequate emotional support, and concluded that the mother was incompetent to face and handle the problems presented to parents by children in their advancing years. These considerations are beyond the mere poverty or lifestyle characterizations which this Court found inadequate in Fisher and Doney. Here, the District Court's conclusion that the child was harmed by her home environment is supported by the testimony of social workers, physicians, and psychologists. We conclude, therefore, that section 10-1301(2) was constitutionally applied in this case.