Court Opinion

ID: 9714055
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:29:41.461595+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:22.579539
License: Public Domain

SHEPARD, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
When this ease was argued before us, counsel for H.L.K. asserted that the protective order sections of the juvenile code, Indiana Code § 31-6-7-14(a)(l), conferred virtually plenary supervisory authority over any person or institution a juvenile judge might wish to commandeer. “Do you mean a judge could order a school to admit a student to a limited-enrollment class because the judge thought the student would benefit even if the student did not qualify for the class?” we asked. Yes, said counsel. “Do you think the court could order a private employer to hire a student because the judge thought he or she would benefit from having a job?” Yes, said counsel.
It seemed unlikely that most lawyers would assert such sweeping ideas of judicial power. It seemed even more unlikely that this Court would decide to embrace such “a broad grant of judicial authority.” Op. at 242. The unlikely has occurred, however, and I choose not to join. There are a number of reasons why it is wrong to do so.
First, there is every reason to regard the simple phrase in the juvenile code over which we now contest (“control the conduct of any person in relation to the child”) as providing injunctive authority that a court may use in carrying out its substantive powers enumerated elsewhere in the statute. The paradigmatic use of this tool is the protective order aimed at the live-in boyfriend who proves to be a danger to a child’s well-being. The only two reported opinions in which other supreme courts have interpreted juvenile statutes like our own have reached just such a conclusion about the nature of the power they confer. In re Roger S., 338 Md. 385, *243394, 658 A.2d 696, 700 (1995) (“[I]t simply supplements the court’s authority with respect to those matters within the court’s purview under other provisions of the [CHINS] Act.... To read the [CHINS statute] broadly enough to sustain the local court’s order in this case would allow the comprehensive design established in the Education Article to be routinely circumvented through juvenile court proceedings.”); In re B.F., Juvenile, 157 Vt. 67, 71, 595 A.2d 280, 282 (1991) (“[T]he order in B.F. is invalid if viewed as an attempted exercise of authority, through the guise of a protective order, over the manner in which [the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services] transports juveniles.... The juvenile court has not been granted the power to intrude into SRS’s custody whenever it perceives harmful or detrimental conduct.”)
Second, the Court uses a telling vocabulary in describing why courts have such broad power under the protective order provisions in the juvenile code. It says that the pupil discipline statute “does not pre-empt the authority” possessed by probation officers. This choice of vocabulary will prove daunting to lawyers representing those hauled before the courts as responding parties in situations like the one today. The judge’s employee, the probation officer, helps the judge fashion a plan for addressing problems they see in the case before them. Some citizen or agency who seems not to be acting according to that plan is sued by the probation officer, acting to vindicate his “authority”, and must thereafter make a defense before the judge who formulated the plan. Lawyers and clients who find themselves responding under such circumstances will probably not think this is a level playing field.
Third, the majority firmly asserts that a court has “full authority” in lawsuits brought by students or their parents or probation officers with respect to any act of a school not covered by the pupil discipline act.1 This is the very power embraced by counsel at argument.
The Court’s expansive statements concerning judicial power are all spun out of a rather simple protective order provision in the juvenile code. The legislature’s most recent pronouncement in this field reflects an impatience with judicial intrusions on the disciplinary work of school counselors, teachers, and boards. The Court has read the music, but it fails to catch the tune. It makes more difficult the task of local educators as they try to deal with the most serious discipline cases, students who commit felonies. In this instance, as the majority points out, the court’s probation officer thought it necessary to weigh whether the charge should be criminal recklessness or attempted murder. I think the school counselors made a responsible call about whether it was H.L.K. who needed protection or her fellow students.
BOEHM, J., joins in this dissent.

. Under the majority opinion, a juvenile judge continues to have Ml authority to control the conduct of a school corporation in relation to a child adjudicated CHINS or delinquent except with respect to matters in which the school corporation has invoked the pupil discipline statute.