Court Opinion

ID: 9726908
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:12:09.760461+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:17.011448
License: Public Domain

COMPTON, J., Dissenting.
In the case of In re Gregory K. (1980) 106 Cal.App.3d 164 [165 Cal.Rptr. 35], we recognized the existence of, but did not address, the question of the constitutionality of requiring a parent to pay for maintenance of a minor child when that child, because of criminal conduct, has been removed from the family home and placed in a public facility.
In my opinion the time is ripe to face the problem and declare that such procedure cannot be constitutionally justified.
In other words, the time has arrived to recognize that proceedings under Welfare and Institutions Code section 602 to declare a minor a ward of the juvenile court because the minor has offended the penal statutes, for all practical purposes, serves the identical objectives of adult criminal proceedings. What differences do exist inhere in certain procedural steps and dispositional alternatives. The societal objectives of segregation, punishment and rehabilitation are identical.
None of these societal objectives require for their attainment, the punishment of the parents of the malefactor or the imposition on the parents of an obligation to contribute to the maintenance of public facilities greater than the obligation they share with all other taxpayers.
To view the obligations imposed by Welfare and Institutions Code section 903 as an extension of the common law duty of support is pure sophistry. There is no evidence that the parents here are not willing or that they have failed to provide shelter and sustenance to the minor. The plain fact is that society for its best interests has undertaken to *689provide maintenance for the minor away from the family home. Only adherence to the now-discredited notion that all juvenile delinquency is the fault of the parents can justify penalizing the parents in such fashion. I can see no basis for making the liability of the parents to make reimbursement turn on the irrelevant point of whether the minor was handled by the juvenile court or the regular criminal court.
The statute under consideration in effect creates four classes of parents of children who commit crimes. They are:
(1) Parents whose minor children are processed in the adult court;
(2) Parents whose minor children are processed in the juvenile court;
(3) Parents in class 2 who do not have the ability to pay and;
(4) Parents in class 2 who have the ability to pay.
Only class 4 parents are subjected to the additional burden imposed by Welfare and Institutions Code section 903. I can find no constitutional justification for singling out that class of parents for special treatment.
The citizenry pays taxes to build and maintain facilities for the confining of both adults and juveniles who engage in antisocial behavior. It appears to be a fact of life that the great majority of the occupants of these facilities come from the lower economic levels of society and it can be assumed that the parents of those individuals are likewise people of limited resources.
From that, one can extrapolate that class 4 parents comprise a very small percentage of the persons in all four classes and that class 4 is the smallest group of the four. Yet that is the only group singled out for payment. This constitutes “reverse discrimination,” if you will, against persons on the basis of affluence. Further the more affluent the parents, the greater the amount of tax money they have probably already contributed to the cost of operating the facility.
I would, on the basis of the rationale in Dept. of Mental Hygiene v. Hawley (1963) 59 Cal.2d 247 [28 Cal.Rptr. 718, 379 P.2d 22], and Dept. of Mental Hygiene v. Kirchner (1964) 60 Cal.2d 716 [36 Cal.*690Rptr. 488, 388 P.2d 720, 20 A.L.R.3d 353], declare Welfare and Institutions Code section 903 unconstitutional, as a violation of due process of law and a denial of equal protection of the law.
Appellant’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied October 14, 1981.