Court Opinion

ID: 9796660
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:01:58.493771+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:50:53.653461
License: Public Domain

ARMSTRONG, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the majority that our holding in State ex rel SOSCF v. Williams, 168 Or App 538, 7 P3d 655 (2000), rev dismissed 333 Or 596 (2002), was correct and that the juvenile court had authority to require the State Office for Services to Children and Families (SCF) to provide court-appointed special advocates (CASAs) and the children’s attorney with redacted copies of home studies of potential adoptive families who are referred by the adoption counselor to the adoption committee. I would hold further, however, that the juvenile court has the authority to order disclosure to the children’s CASA of redacted copies of home studies of *420potential adoptive families who are not selected by the adoption worker for submission to the committee. The court can exercise its discretion to determine that the disclosure is necessary for the court to review SCF’s identification and selection of a suitable adoptive placement. Accordingly, I concur in the majority’s holding that the case must be remanded but dissent from its determination that only home studies of families that are submitted to the adoption committee must be disclosed.
In 1999, the legislature amended ORS 419B.449 and ORS 419B.476 to add juvenile court oversight to SCF’s “identification and selection” of suitable adoptive families. Or Laws 1999, ch 568, §§ 1, 2. Those amendments apply to this case. The court is now required, under ORS 419B.449(3), in making findings that a child is to continue in substitute care, to “consider the efforts made to develop the concurrent case plan, including, but not limited to, identification and selection of a suitable adoptive placement for the child when adoption is the concurrent case plan.” (Emphasis added.) Further, under ORS 419B.449(4), the court may order SCF “to consider additional information in developing the case plan or concurrent case plan.” Under ORS 419B.476(9)(a) (1999), in conducting a permanency hearing the court may order SCF “to develop or expand a case plan, concurrent case plan or case progress report * * *[.]” And now, after the 1999 amendments, ORS 419B.476(9)(e) (1999) authorizes the court to “[r]eview efforts made to develop the concurrent case plan including, but not limited to, identification and selection of a suitable adoptive placement for the child.” Thus, in both review and permanency hearings, the court is authorized to oversee SCF’s identification and selection of a suitable adoptive placement.
Without full access to the home studies of potential adoptive families, the juvenile court’s hands are tied, and its authority to review SCF’s “identification and selection of a suitable adoptive placement” is illusory. As the majority so aptly states, “where the legislature has expressly authorized a role or function to be performed in an adoption proceeding, it has implicitly provided that the information necessary to the performance of that function is to be supplied to the person that the legislature has designated to perform that role.” *421182 Or App at 409. The majority does not dispute that the juvenile court may itself examine the home studies of potential adoptive families who are not selected by SCF for referral to the adoption committee. Inexplicably, however, the majority fails to address why ORS 419B.449 and ORS 419B.476 do not require that we accord greater discretion to the juvenile court to authorize disclosure of that same information to the CASAs who are assisting the court.
Perhaps the majority’s result hinges on its reasoning that the role of the children’s CASA does not expressly encompass review of SCF’s “identification and selection” of adoptive families. I reject that reasoning. As the majority acknowledges, a key function of the CASA, an appointee of the court, includes investigating all relevant information about the case and ensuring that all relevant facts are brought before the court. ORS 419A.170. It does not matter that no rule or statute specifically authorizes the CASAs to participate in the process of selecting families to be submitted to the adoption committee. A CASA’s duties run to the juvenile court and the child. To the extent that the juvenile court determines that disclosure of the home studies to the CASA would serve to assist the court in performing its functions under ORS 419B.449 and 419B.476, that authorization is sufficient.
I do not contend that the CASAs themselves can usurp SCF’s role of selecting potential adoptive families to be referred to the adoption committee. But I believe that the juvenile court must be able to examine home studies in order to fulfill its statutory obligation to oversee the identification and selection of potential adoptive families by SCF and that the CASA, in assisting the court, can carry out her functions to investigate all relevant information about a case, and to ensure that all relevant facts are brought before the court, only if the court has discretion to give her access to the same home studies that the court determines that it must review.
Further, I reject the majority’s suggestion that the juvenile court’s discretion to review home studies should be guided by balancing the potential adoptive family’s “right to privacy” against the CASA’s “right to know.” First, although home studies are not subject to disclosure under the Public *422Records Law, ORS 192.502(4), SCF has not provided authority, and I am not persuaded, that adoptive home studies must be kept confidential from the court. Second, assuming that there is a right to privacy in home studies, that right is not implicated by the CASA’s review of documents that have identifying information deleted. The only factor guiding the court’s discretion in ordering disclosure to the CASA of redacted home studies should be whether disclosure is necessary to the CASA’s function of assisting the court.
Because the juvenile court made a blanket determination that the home studies of all potential adoptive families must be disclosed to the CASA, and, because it made no determination as to which home studies had to be disclosed to the CASA in this case to enable the CASA to assist the court, I would remand the case for reconsideration by the juvenile court. Accordingly, I concur in the majority’s holding that a remand is necessary, but I would limit the scope of the remand to a reconsideration by the juvenile court of whether all of the home studies, fully redacted, should be disclosed to the CASA or whether only some of the studies need be disclosed in order for the CASA to carry out her function of assisting the court.