Opinion ID: 1926384
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Termination Requires Due Process

Text: A party is entitled to due process prior to the termination of a right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. [3] The due process clause in the United States Constitution imposes on the States the standards necessary to ensure that judicial proceedings are fundamentally fair. [4] The United States Supreme Court and this Court have recognized, as a fundamental liberty interest, [5] a parent's interest in maintaining a relationship with his or her child. Accordingly, both procedural and substantive, due process must be afforded to the parties in a termination of parental rights proceeding. [6] Procedural due process consists of notice to the person whose right is affected by a proceeding ...; a reasonable opportunity to refute or defend against a charge or accusation; a reasonable opportunity to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses and present evidence on the charge or accusation; representation by counsel ...; and a hearing before an impartial decisionmaker. [7] Similarly, this Court has stated that due process entails providing the parties to the proceeding with the opportunity to be heard, by presenting testimony or otherwise, and the right of controverting, by proof, every material fact which bears on the question of right in the matter involved in an orderly proceeding appropriate to the nature of the hearing and adapted to meet its ends. [8] In a termination of parental rights proceeding, [this Court] analyzes ... due process standards in accordance with the factors established by the United States Supreme Court in Mathews v. Eldridge.  [9] Those factors are: (1) the private interest that will be affected by the official action; (2) the risk that there will be an erroneous deprivation of the interest through the procedures used and the probable value of any additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and (3) the government interest involved, including the added and fiscal and administrative burdens that additional or substitute procedures would require. [10] DFS acknowledges that the termination of Orville's parental rights adversely affects Orville's private interests under the first factor of the Mathews test. The parental right is a sacred one. [11] DFS admits that Orville's fundamental liberty interest in retaining her parental rights is substantial. [12]