Court Opinion

ID: 9510192
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 21:53:42.22488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:07:57.932968
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE NELSON
specially concurs.
¶77 I concur in the legal analysis and in the result of the Court’s opinion. Given the record, the state of the law, and the arguments made on appeal, there was virtually no other choice. I am, nevertheless, in agreement with much of what Justice Leaphart has to say in his dissenting opinion regarding children’s constitutional rights in proceedings such as the one at bar.
¶78 Under our Montana Constitution, Article II, Section 15, children enjoy the same fundamental rights as adults. At a bare minimum these include inalienable rights to a clean and healthful environment, to pursue life’s basic necessities, to enjoy a safe, healthy and happy life (Article II, Section 3) and to basic human dignity (Article II, Section 4).
¶79 Unfortunately, as in the instant case, these rights generally are not even factored into the arguments of the warring parties and their attorneys. On the other hand, where they are mentioned, the children’s fundamental constitutional rights are typically trumped by the competing rights of the biological parent to custody and to parent *76his or her children — even in cases where the natural parent is dysfunctional, abusive and has little or no parenting skills or substantive relationship with his or her children. More often than not (and this case is an excellent example) the children’s fundamental constitutional rights are simply ground up in the machinery of various statutory schemes weighted heavily in favor of this biologically-based right to custody and to parent and which exclude or marginalize other relationships that actually might be more in the children’s (as opposed to the natural parent’s) best interest.
¶80 The Court’s answer to the dissent is, in my view, legally correct. Nonetheless, to the extent that Justice Leaphart speaks from the frustration of knowing that the result of our decision will be to cause these already traumatized children to lose the stable and loving home that they need, deserve and to which they are constitutionally entitled, then he speaks for me as well. The cold letter of the law has vindicated Frank’s rights. Tragically, David’s and Michael’s were not even considered.