Opinion ID: 1405279
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: constitutionality of rcw 26.10.160(3) and former rcw 26.09.240

Text: In Wolcott and Troxel, the Court of Appeals rewrite of RCW 26.10.160(3) is based on its concern that a literal reading of the statute would have the intolerable consequence of stable families being forced to defend in court against visitation petitions having no basis. In re Visitation of Wolcott, 85 Wash.App. 468, 472, 933 P.2d 1066 (1997); see also In re Visitation of Troxel, 87 Wash.App. 131, 940 P.2d 698. While the statute as written may have potentially troubling consequences for stable families, this does not justify Court of Appeals rewriting of the statute. Nevertheless, it is undisputed that parents have a fundamental right to autonomy in child rearing decisions. The United States Supreme Court has long recognized a constitutionally protected interest of parents to raise their children without state interference. See Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399, 43 S.Ct. 625, 67 L.Ed. 1042, 29 A.L.R. 1446 (1923) (The liberty interest guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment includes freedom to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children....); Pierce v. Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus & Mary, 268 U.S. 510, 534, 45 S.Ct. 571, 39 A.L.R. 468, 69 L.Ed. 1070 (1925) (law prohibiting parents from sending children to private as opposed to public school unconstitutional because it would unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents ... to direct the upbringing and education of [their] children....); Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166, 64 S.Ct. 438, 88 L.Ed. 645 (1944) (Court recognized that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents .... it is in recognition of this that [our] decisions have respected the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter.); Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 235-36, 92 S.Ct. 1526, 32 L.Ed.2d 15 (1972) (exempting Amish from the state compulsory education law requiring children to attend school beyond the eighth grade); Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 753, 102 S.Ct. 1388, 71 L.Ed.2d 599 (1982) (in determining the standard of proof necessary in termination of parental rights case, the Court noted its historical recognition that freedom of personal choice in matters of family life is a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.) The Supreme Court defined the nature of this constitutionally protected interest in Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 651, 92 S.Ct. 1208, 31 L.Ed.2d 551 (1972), when it held unconstitutional an Illinois law which declared that, upon the death of the mother, children of unwed fathers become wards of the state: The private interest here, that of a man in the children he has sired and raised, undeniably warrants deference and, absent a powerful countervailing interest, protection. It is plain that the interest of a parent in the companionship, care, custody, and management of his or her children come[s] to this Court with a momentum for respect lacking when appeal is made to liberties which derive merely from shifting economic arrangements. The Court has frequently emphasized the importance of the family. The rights to conceive and to raise one's children have been deemed essential, basic civil rights of man.... 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. The integrity of the family unit has found protection in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Ninth Amendment.... (Citations omitted.) The family entity is the core element upon which modern civilization is founded. Traditionally, the integrity of the family unit has been zealously guarded by the courts. The safeguarding of familial bonds is an innate concomitant of the protective status accorded the family as a societal institution. A parent's constitutionally protected right to rear his or her children without state interference, has been recognized as a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment and also as a fundamental right derived from the privacy rights inherent in the constitution. Where a fundamental right is involved, state interference is justified only if the state can show that it has a compelling interest and such interference is narrowly drawn to meet only the compelling state interest involved. See Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 155, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973); O'Hartigan v. Department of Personnel, 118 Wash.2d 111, 117, 821 P.2d 44 (1991); In re Welfare of Sumey, 94 Wash.2d 757, 762, 621 P.2d 108 (1980). In answering whether the state visitation statutes at issue serve a compelling state interest we must understand the sources of state power to intrude on family life. The state may act pursuant to its authority to protect citizens from injuries inflicted by third persons or to protect its citizens from threats to health and safety. Thus, in the context of family life, the state's police power gives it the authority to require the vaccination of children against communicable diseases over the objection of their fit parents. See Prince, 321 U.S. at 166-67, 64 S.Ct. 438. Similarly, the state may step in and override a decision of a parent where the decision would harm the child. In Prince v. Massachusetts , for example, the Supreme Court refused to invalidate legislation which prohibited a parent from permitting a minor to sell merchandise on a public street. Prince, 321 U.S. 158, 64 S.Ct. 438, 88 L.Ed. 645. Although the Court acknowledged the parent's constitutionally protected right to child-rearing autonomy, it found a narrow exception necessary in light of the crippling effects of child employment, more especially in public places. Id. at 168, 64 S.Ct. 438. Police power thus empowered the state to intrude on a parental decision in the interests of society as a whole where the decision directly and severely imperiled the child. The state's other source of authority to intrude on a family's autonomy is its parens patriae power. As parens patriae the state acts from the viewpoint and in the interests of the child. Like the state's police power the state may act only pursuant to its parens patriae power where a child has been harmed or where there is a threat of harm to a child. See Yoder, 406 U.S. at 206, 92 S.Ct. 1526. Both parens patriae power and police power provide the state with the authority to act to protect children lacking the guidance and protection of fit parents of their own, and although they may represent different perspectives, both contemplate harm to the child and, in practical terms, have been used nearly interchangeably in the fashioning of a threshold requirement of parental unfitness, harm, or threatened harm. See Joan C. Bohl, The Unprecedented Intrusion: A Survey and Analysis of Selected Grandparent Visitation Cases, 49 Okla. L.Rev. 29 (1996). For example, in Yoder, the Supreme Court held that the First and Fourteenth Amendments prevented the state from compelling Amish parents to send their children to public school after completion of the eight grade. Yoder, 406 U.S. at 205, 92 S.Ct. 1526. The state argued, based on the Court's prior decision in Prince, that such a decision fails to give due regard to the power of the state as parens patriae to extend the benefit of the secondary education to children regardless of the wishes of their parents. Yoder, 406 U.S. at 229, 92 S.Ct. 1526. The Court explained that in Prince, the Legislature was within its authority to curtail the evils associated with child labor. Id. at 230, 92 S.Ct. 1526. But unlike Prince, the case presented in Yoder was not one in which any harm to the physical or mental health of the child or to the public safety, peace, order, or welfare has been demonstrated or may be properly inferred. Id. These parties who have petitioned for visitation rights argue that former RCW 26.09.240 and RCW 26.10.160(3) serve a compelling state interest that warrants use of the state's parens patriae power to impose visitation with third persons where the visitation serves the best interest of the child. Petitioners contend that a judicially determined finding that visitation is in the best interests of the child is a sufficiently compelling justification to override a parent's opposition, regardless of the fact that the parent's fitness is not challenged or that there has been no showing of harm or threatened harm to the child. However, the Supreme Court cases which support the constitutional right to rear one's child and the right to family privacy indicate that the state may interfere only if it appears that parental decisions will jeopardize the health or safety of the child, or have a potential for significant social burdens. Yoder, 406 U.S. at 234, 92 S.Ct. 1526. In Yoder, for example, the Court deemed significant the fact that Amish children would not be harmed by receiving an Amish education rather than a public education. Yoder, 406 U.S. at 230, 92 S.Ct. 1526. Likewise, in Pierce, the Court found that parents' decisions to send their children to private schools were not inherently harmful, as there was nothing in the ... records to indicate that [the private schools] have failed to discharge their obligations to patrons, students, or the state. Pierce, 268 U.S. at 534, 45 S.Ct. 571. In Meyer, a case in which a teacher had been convicted of teaching a child German, the Court found that proficiency in a foreign language ... is not injurious to the health, morals or understanding of the ordinary child, and thus the state's desire to foster a homogeneous people with American ideals was insufficient justification for forbidding foreign language instruction. Meyer, 262 U.S. at 402-03, 43 S.Ct. 625. In Stanley, the Court required an individualized finding of parental neglect before stripping an unwed father of his parental rights. 405 U.S. at 645, 92 S.Ct. 1208. On the other hand, the Court upheld the conviction of the mother who allowed her child to sell magazines, approving state interference designed to prevent psychological or physical injury to the child. Prince, 321 U.S. at 170, 64 S.Ct. 438. It is clear from Supreme Court precedent that some harm threatens the child's welfare before the state may constitutionally interfere with a parent's right to rear his or her child. Washington has followed suit, allowing state interference with parents' rights to raise their children only where the state seeks to prevent harm or a risk of harm to the child. This court has emphasized that a state can only intrude upon a family's integrity pursuant to its parens patriae right when parental actions or decisions seriously conflict with the physical or mental health of the child. In re the Welfare of Sumey, 94 Wash.2d at 762, 621 P.2d 108 (citing Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584, 603, 99 S.Ct. 2493, 61 L.Ed.2d 101 (1979); Yoder, 406 U.S. at 230, 92 S.Ct. 1526). In Sumey, parents were temporarily denied custody of their child pursuant to former RCW 13.32, [2] which allowed for the temporary alternative placement of a child outside the parents' home. Sumey, 94 Wash.2d at 758-59, 621 P.2d 108. Under former RCW 13.30.020, repealed by Laws of 1979, ch. 155, § 86, a child could be placed into limited custody where the child had been reported as a runaway or when a law enforcement officer believed the child was in circumstances which constituted imminent and substantial danger to the child's physical safety. The state could then, at the request of the child or the parents, place the child in a temporary [3] alternative residential placement if the Court found by a preponderance of the evidence that the petition was not capricious and that there was a conflict between the parent and child that cannot be remedied by counseling, crisis intervention, or continued placement in the parental home. Id. at 764, 621 P.2d 108 (quoting former RCW 13.32.040, repealed by Laws of 1979, ch.155, § 86). In Sumey, we concluded that the state properly acted pursuant to its parens patriae power finding that former RCW 13.32 was enacted to safeguard the mental and emotional health of the child by removing him or her from a situation of family conflict that is so extreme that the parents and child are unable to live together even with the aid of counseling. Id. at 764, 621 P.2d 108. Additionally, the court emphasized that the statute also protected the physical health of children like [Sumey] ... who [were] driven by the family conflict to run away from home and expose themselves to the physical dangers that attend running away. Id. at 764-65, 621 P.2d 108. [4] In contrast, this case presents no such compelling interest of the state. The statutes at issue do not contemplate any similar harm or potential harm to the child which must be prevented by third party visitation rights. Accordingly, the parens patriae authority does not justify the interference with parental rights permitted by these statutes. One court aptly emphasized that [t]he requirement of harm is the sole protection that parents have against pervasive state interference in the parenting process. Hawk v. Hawk, 855 S.W.2d 573, 580 (Tenn. 1993). For the state to delegate to the parents the authority to raise the child as the parents see fit, except when the state thinks another choice would be better, is to give the parents no authority at all. You may do whatever you choose, so long as it is what I would choose also does not constitute a delegation of authority. Id. (quoting Kathleen Bean, Grandparent Visitation: Can the Parent Refuse?, 24 U. Louisville J. Fam. L. 393, 441 (1985-86)). We recognize that in certain circumstances where a child has enjoyed a substantial relationship with a third person, arbitrarily depriving the child of the relationship could cause severe psychological harm to the child. The difficulty, however, is that such a standard is not required in RCW 26.10.160(3) or in former RCW 26.09.240. Both statutes allow any person to petition for forced visitation of a child at any time with the only requirement being that the visitation serve the best interest of the child. There is no threshold requirement of a finding of harm to the child as a result of the discontinuation of visitation. Short of preventing harm to the child, the standard of best interest of the child is insufficient to serve as a compelling state interest overruling a parent's fundamental rights. State intervention to better a child's quality of life through third party visitation is not justified where the child's circumstances are otherwise satisfactory. To suggest otherwise would be the logical equivalent to asserting that the state has the authority to break up stable families and redistribute its infant population to provide each child with the best family. It is not within the province of the state to make significant decisions concerning the custody of children merely because it could make a better decision. Additionally, the statutes lack other safeguards to prevent stable families from defending in court against frivolous petitions for visitation. Most notably the statutes do not require the petitioner to establish that he or she has a substantial relationship with the child. It seems that at a minimum such a showing should be required because harm to a child cannot reasonably be anticipated as a result of no contact with someone with whom the child has had no such relationship. Also, the statutes do not require the court to take into consideration such factors as the parents' reasons for restricting visitation with the petitioner or any allegations of past physical or mental abuse by petitioner when making a visitation determination. Parents have a right to limit visitation of their children with third persons. The law's concept of the family rests on a presumption that parents possess what a child lacks in maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment.... Brooks v. Parkerson, 265 Ga. 189, 192, 454 S.E.2d 769 (1995). Some parents and judges will not care if their child is physically disciplined by a third person; some parents and judges will not care if a third person teaches the child a religion inconsistent with the parents' religion; and some judges and parents will not care if the child is exposed to or taught racist or sexist beliefs. But many parents and judges will care, and, between the two, the parents should be the ones to choose whether to expose their children to certain people or ideas. See Kathleen Bean, Grandparent Visitation: Can the Parent Refuse?, 24 U. Louisville J. Fam. L. 393 (1985-6). RCW 26.10.160(3) and former RCW 26.09.240 impermissibly interfere with a parent's fundamental interest in the care, custody and companionship of the child. Sumey, 94 Wash.2d at 762, 621 P.2d 108.