Opinion ID: 2602482
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Curtis S.

Text: In 1994, the Court of Appeal for the Fifth Appellate District decided Curtis S., supra, 25 Cal.App.4th 687, 30 Cal.Rptr.2d 739, in which a child's maternal grandparents obtained a judgment under former section 232 of the Civil Code freeing the child from his father's custody and control. On the father's appeal from the judgment terminating his parental rights, the Court of Appeal initially granted his request for appointment of counsel, but later it revoked the appointment, holding that an indigent parent appealing from a judgment freeing a child from the parent's custody and control does not have a right to appellate counsel if the child is not a dependent child of the juvenile court. ( Curtis S., supra, at p. 691, 30 Cal.Rptr.2d 739.) The court recognized that in Jacqueline H., supra, 21 Cal.3d 170, 145 Cal.Rptr. 548, 577 P.2d 683, this court had construed the statutory scheme as implicitly requiring a reviewing court to appoint counsel for any indigent parent appealing from a judgment freeing a child from parental custody and control ( Curtis S., supra, at pp. 691-692, 30 Cal.Rptr.2d 739), but the Court of Appeal took the position that the Legislature, by its 1984 enactment of former section 237.7 of the Civil Code (later repealed and reenacted without substantive change as Family Code section 7895), had restrict[ed] a parent's right to appointed appellate counsel to situations in which the child who was freed from parental custody was a dependent child of the juvenile court. ( Curtis S., supra, at p. 692, 30 Cal.Rptr.2d 739, italics added.) The court further held that this restriction did not violate the constitutional equal protection or due process rights of parents of nondependent children. ( Id. at pp. 692-693, 30 Cal.Rptr.2d 739.)