Courts in the state had been divided over whether a parent must be abusive, neglectful or otherwise unfit to trigger a long-standing law declaring the parent’s minor child to be a ‘dependent’ of the juvenile court, sfgate.com wrote.
That status allows a judge to order counseling or treatment for both parent and child, and, if problems persist, to remove the child from parental custody.
In a ruling that resolved the issue, the state’s high court said the law applies whenever a child is endangered because the parents have failed to ‘adequately supervise or protect the child’.
The law was intended to protect youths who are ‘at substantial risk of serious physical harm due to no fault of the parent’, Justice Ming Chin said in the 7-0 decision, issued Thursday.
Justice Goodwin Liu, in a separate opinion, suggested the Legislature might consider rewriting the law, which can inflict ‘a painful stigma’ on innocent parents.
State law allows juvenile courts to supervise minors who are ‘dependents’, because of their parents’ failure or inability to take care of them, or ‘delinquents’, because of crime or other conduct such as running away from home or violating curfew.
Orders in dependency cases are often directed at both parents and children, while judges in delinquency cases decide whether the youth should be counseled, sent to treatment programs or locked up. Judges in both types of cases can order the child placed in someone else’s custody or sent to a foster home.