Opinion ID: 1281444
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Constitutional Defenses

Text: In the absence of a statutory basis to bar defendant's prosecution, we necessarily reach her constitutional claims. (14a) Defendant and the Church first contend that her conduct is absolutely protected from criminal liability by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, section 4, of the California Constitution. We do not agree. (15) The First Amendment bars government from prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Although the clause absolutely protects religious belief, religiously motivated conduct remains subject to regulation for the protection of society. ( Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940) 310 U.S. 296, 303-304 [84 L.Ed. 1213, 1218, 60 S.Ct. 900, 128 A.L.R. 1352].) To determine whether governmental regulation of religious conduct is violative of the First Amendment, the gravity of the state's interest must be balanced against the severity of the religious imposition. ( Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) 406 U.S. 205, 221 [32 L.Ed.2d 15, 28, 92 S.Ct. 1526].) If the regulation is justified in view of the balanced interests at stake, the free exercise clause requires that the policy additionally represent the least restrictive alternative available to adequately advance the state's objectives. ( Thomas v. Review Bd., Ind. Empl. Sec. Div. (1981) 450 U.S. 707, 718 [67 L.Ed.2d 624, 634, 101 S.Ct. 1425].) (14b) Defendant does not dispute the gravity of the governmental interest involved in this case, as well she should not. Imposition of felony liability for endangering or killing an ill child by failing to provide medical care furthers an interest of unparalleled significance: the protection of the very lives of California's children, upon whose healthy, well-rounded growth ... into full maturity as citizens our democratic society rests, for its continuance.... ( Prince v. Massachusetts (1944) 321 U.S. 158, 168 [88 L.Ed. 645, 653, 64 S.Ct. 438].) Balanced against this interest is a religious infringement of significant dimensions. Defendant unquestionably relied on prayer treatment as an article of genuine faith, the restriction of which would seriously impinge on the practice of her religion. We note, however, that resort to medicine does not constitute sin for a Christian Scientist (Schneider, Christian Science and the Law: Room for Compromise?, supra, 1 Colum. J.L. & Soc. Probs. at pp. 87-88), does not subject a church member to stigmatization (Talbot, The Position of the Christian Science Church, supra, 26 N.E. Med. J. at p. 1642), does not result in divine retribution (Schneider, op. cit. supra, at pp. 87-88), and, according to the Church's amicus curiae brief, is not a matter of church compulsion. Regardless of the severity of the religious imposition, the governmental interest is plainly adequate to justify its restrictive effect. As the United States Supreme Court stated in Prince v. Massachusetts, supra, 321 U.S. at page 170 [88 L.Ed. at p. 654], Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children before they have reached the age of full legal discretion when they can make that choice for themselves. The court in Prince considered a free-exercise claim asserted by parents whose religious beliefs required that their children sell religious tracts in violation of child labor laws. If parents are not at liberty to martyr children by taking their labor, it follows a fortiori that they are not at liberty to martyr children by taking their very lives. As the court explained, The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death. ( Id. at pp. 166-167 [88 L.Ed. at p. 653]; accord, Wisconsin v. Yoder, supra, 406 U.S. at pp. 233-234 [32 L.Ed.2d at p. 35].) In an attempt to avoid this inexorable conclusion, the Church argues at length over the purportedly pivotal distinction between the governmental compulsion of a religiously objectionable act and the governmental prohibition of a religiously motivated act. Accepting arguendo the force of the distinction, we find that it has no relevance in a case involving an interest of this magnitude. As the court in Prince recognized, parents have no right to free exercise of religion at the price of a child's life, regardless of the prohibitive or compulsive nature of the governmental infringement. Furthermore, the United States Supreme Court has specifically sustained the compulsion of religiously prohibited conduct for interests no more compelling than here implicated. In Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905) 197 U.S. 11, 39 [49 L.Ed. 643, 655, 25 S.Ct. 358], the court upheld a law compelling the vaccination of children for communicable diseases in the face of parental religious objections. In United States v. Lee (1982) 455 U.S. 252, 261 [71 L.Ed.2d 127, 135, 102 S.Ct. 1051], the court upheld a law requiring that the Amish violate the tenets of their faith by participating in the Social Security system. And in Gillette v. United States (1971) 401 U.S. 437, 462 [28 L.Ed.2d 168, 188, 91 S.Ct. 828], the court upheld the government's right to compel certain conscientious objectors to make war despite the religious character of their objections. We see no basis in these precedents for the conclusion that parents may constitutionally insulate themselves from state compulsion so long as their life-threatening religious conduct takes the form of an omission rather than an act. The imposition of felony liability for failure to seek medical care for a seriously ill child is thus justified by a compelling state interest. To survive a First Amendment challenge, however, the policy must also represent the least restrictive alternative available to the state. Defendant and the Church argue that civil dependency proceedings advance the governmental interest in a far less intrusive manner. This is not evident. First, we have already observed the profoundly intrusive nature of such proceedings; it is not clear that parents would prefer to lose custody of their children pursuant to a disruptive and invasive judicial inquiry than to face privately the prospect of criminal liability. Second, child dependency proceedings advance the governmental interest only when the state learns of a child's illness in time to take protective measures, which quite likely will be the exception rather than the rule: Under ordinary circumstances, ... the case of a true believer in faith healing will not even come to the attention of the authorities, unless and until someone dies. (Comment, Religious Beliefs and the Criminal Justice System: Some Problems of the Faith Healer, supra, 8 Loyola L.A. L.Rev. at pp. 403-404.) Finally, the imposition of criminal liability is reserved for the actual loss or endangerment of a child's life and thus is narrowly tailored to those instances when governmental intrusion is absolutely compelled. We conclude that an adequately effective and less restrictive alternative is not available to further the state's compelling interest in assuring the provision of medical care to gravely ill children whose parents refuse such treatment on religious grounds. Accordingly, the First Amendment and its California equivalent do not bar defendant's criminal prosecution. (Accord, Craig v. State (1959) 220 Md. 590 [155 A.2d 684, 690]; People v. Pierson (1903) 176 N.Y. 201 [68 N.E. 243, 245]; Owens v. State (1911) 6 Okla. Crim. 110 [116 P. 345, 347-348]; Commonwealth v. Barnhart (1985) 345 Pa.Super. 10 [497 A.2d 616, 623-624]; Note, California's Prayer Healing Dilemma, supra, 14 Hastings Const.L.Q. at pp. 412.)
(16) Article I, section 7, of the California Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution both assure that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Among the implications of this constitutional command is that the state must give its citizenry fair notice of potentially criminal conduct. This requirement has two components: due process requires a statute to be definite enough to provide (1) a standard of conduct for those whose activities are proscribed and (2) a standard for police enforcement and for ascertainment of guilt. ( Burg v. Municipal Court (1983) 35 Cal.3d 257, 269 [198 Cal. Rptr. 145, 673 P.2d 732], cert. den. 466 U.S. 967 [80 L.Ed.2d 812, 104 S.Ct. 2337]; see also Kolender v. Lawson (1983) 461 U.S. 352, 357-358 [75 L.Ed.2d 903, 908-909, 103 S.Ct. 1855].) (17a) Defendant contends that sections 192(b) and 273a(1), when read together with section 270, violate this constitutional dictate. We initially observe that these statutes do not invite standardless law enforcement. Unlike typical due process challenges involving an ambiguously worded statute applied in an arbitrary and unforeseeable manner (see, e.g., Lanzetta v. New Jersey (1939) 306 U.S. 451 [83 L.Ed. 888, 59 S.Ct. 618]), we consider here three separate provisions that clearly identify their respective proscriptions. ( People v. Harris (1966) 239 Cal. App.2d 393, 395-397 [48 Cal. Rptr. 677] [upholding the validity of ง 273a on fair notice grounds]; People v. Wilson (1947) 78 Cal. App.2d 108, 114 [177 P.2d 567] [same, ง 192(b)]; People v. Yates (1931) 114 Cal. App. Supp. 782, 789 [298 P. 961] [same, ง 270].) Even if we accept arguendo defendant's contention that the intersection of the statutes creates uncertainty on the part of law enforcement officials regarding the legality of prayer treatment when a child's life is endangered or lost, the officials are nevertheless required to make only one discretionary judgment: whether or not to prosecute conduct otherwise within the reach of the felony statutes in view of the provisions of section 270. This discretion certainly is not of such a standardless sweep [that it] allows policemen, prosecutors, and juries to pursue their personal predilections. ( Smith v. Goguen (1974) 415 U.S. 566, 575 [39 L.Ed.2d 605, 613, 94 S.Ct. 1242].) With respect to the remaining component of the due process analysis, defendant makes two arguments why the statutory scheme fails to provide fair notice. She first contends that sections 192(b) and 273a(1) provide no notice of the point at which lawful prayer treatment becomes unlawful, thus requiring her at peril of life, liberty or property to speculate as to the meaning of penal statutes. ( Lanzetta v. New Jersey, supra, 306 U.S. at p. 453 [83 L.Ed. at p. 890].) She frames her argument in the form of a rhetorical question: Is it lawful for a parent to rely solely on treatment by spiritual means through prayer for the care of his/her ill child during the first few days of sickness but not for the fourth or fifth day? Justice Holmes correctly answers: [T]he law is full of instances where a man's fate depends on his estimating rightly, that is, as the jury subsequently estimates it, some matter of degree.... `An act causing death may be murder, manslaughter, or misadventure, according to the degree of danger attending it' by common experience in the circumstances known to the actor. ( Nash v. United States (1913) 229 U.S. 373, 377 [57 L.Ed. 1232, 1235, 33 S.Ct. 780]; see also Coates v. City of Cincinnati (1971) 402 U.S. 611, 614 [29 L.Ed.2d 214, 217, 91 S.Ct. 1686].) The matter of degree that persons relying on prayer treatment must estimate rightly is the point at which their course of conduct becomes criminally negligent. In terms of notice, due process requires no more. ( Burg v. Municipal Court, supra, 35 Cal.3d at p. 270.) Defendant contends in conclusion that the statutory scheme violates her right to fair notice by allowing punishment under sections 192(b) and 273a(1) for the same conduct that is assertedly accommodated under section 270. (18) (See fn. 18.) She argues in essence that the statutes issue inexplicably contradictory commands ( Raley v. Ohio (1959) 360 U.S. 423, 438 [3 L.Ed.2d 1344, 1356, 79 S.Ct. 1257]) and thus violate due process by precluding an ordinary person [from] intelligently choos[ing], in advance, what course it is lawful for him to pursue. ( Connally v. General Construction Co. (1926) 269 U.S. 385, 393 [70 L.Ed. 322, 329, 46 S.Ct. 126].) [18] (19) In considering whether a legislative proscription is sufficiently clear to satisfy the requirements of fair notice, we look first to the language of the statute, then to its legislative history, and finally to California decisions construing the statutory language. ( Pryor v. Municipal Court (1979) 25 Cal.3d 238, 246 [158 Cal. Rptr. 330, 599 P.2d 636]; People v. Mirmirani (1981) 30 Cal.3d 375, 383 [178 Cal. Rptr. 792, 636 P.2d 1130].) We thus require citizens to apprise themselves not only of statutory language but also of legislative history, subsequent judicial construction, and underlying legislative purposes ( People v. Grubb (1965) 63 Cal.2d 614, 620 [47 Cal. Rptr. 772, 408 P.2d 100]). (See generally Amsterdam, The Void-For-Vagueness Doctrine in the Supreme Court (1960) 109 U. Pa. L.Rev. 67.) These principles express the strong presumption that legislative enactments must be upheld unless their unconstitutionality clearly, positively, and unmistakably appears. [Citations.] A statute should be sufficiently certain so that a person may know what is prohibited thereby and what may be done without violating its provisions, but it cannot be held void for uncertainty if any reasonable and practical construction can be given to its language. ( Lockheed Aircraft Corp. v. Superior Court (1946) 28 Cal.2d 481, 484 [171 P.2d 21, 166 A.L.R. 701], citations omitted.) (17b) As we have discussed at length above, the purposes of the statutes here at issue are evidently distinguishable: sections 192(b) and 273a(1) protect against grievous and immediate physical harm while section 270 assures the routine provision of child support at parental expense. ( Ante, at pp. 124-126.) In light of these distinguishable objectives, it cannot be said that the legality of defendant's conduct under section 270 constitutes an inexplicably contradictory command with respect to the separate requirements of sections 192(b) and 273a(1). Indeed, the legislative history of section 270 specifically demonstrates the Legislature's unwillingness to extend the statute's religious exemption to the felony provisions. ( Ante, at pp. 127-129.) Sections 270, 192(b), and 273a(1) thus provided constitutionally sufficient notice to defendant that the provision of prayer alone to her daughter would be accommodated only insofar as the child was not threatened with serious physical harm or illness. [19]