Danforth v. State Department of Health and Welfare

303 A.2d 794, 1973 Me. LEXIS 288
CourtSupreme Judicial Court of Maine
DecidedApril 17, 1973
StatusPublished
Cited by83 cases

This text of 303 A.2d 794 (Danforth v. State Department of Health and Welfare) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Judicial Court of Maine primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Danforth v. State Department of Health and Welfare, 303 A.2d 794, 1973 Me. LEXIS 288 (Me. 1973).

Opinions

POMEROY, Justice.

This appeal from a judgment entered by a Justice of this Court acting in the Superior Court in a habeas corpus proceeding raises an important question of first impression in this State.

The appellants are the natural parents of a minor child.

[795]*795Proceeding agreeably to the provisions of 22 M.R.S.A. § 3792, the Department of Health and Welfare caused a petition seeking an order of the appropriate court that the custody of the minor child be taken from the parents and" be given to the Department of Health and Welfare of the State of Maine.

This petition was initiated in the District Court, District #7, Kennebec County, which Court it is conceded had jurisdiction of the subject matter and the parties.

An Order issued removing the child from the custody of appellants and placing custody in the Department.

This habeas corpus petition followed.

There is no issue raised but that the District Court gave appropriate notice of the pendency of the petition to the appellants.

It is agreed that a hearing was had in the District Court and that both parents were in attendance and participated in such hearing.

It is established by stipulation that at all times material hereto the petitioners were indigent.

Also agreed is that the appellants were at no time advised by the District Court of any right to court-appointed counsel and were not aware that any such right might exist.

The issue with which we are faced is: In a proceeding initiated under 22 M.R.S. A. § 3792, do indigent parents, against whom the petition is directed, have a right to counsel appointed by the Court and provided at the State’s expense ?

The presiding Justice citing Robinson v. Kaufman, 8 Cal.App.3d 783, 87 Cal.Rptr. 678 (1970), cert. denied sub nom., Kaufman v. Carter, 402 U.S. 964, 91 S.Ct. 1624, 29 L.Ed.2d 128 (1971), as a leading authority, felt constrained in his role as a single Justice to give “No” as his answer in recognition of the generally accepted distinction between “criminal” and “civil” proceedings.

Wc, not being so constrained, reach an opposite conclusion.

We hold that an indigent parent or parents against whom a custody petition is instituted under 22 M.R.S.A. § 3792 is entitled to have counsel appointed at the State’s expense unless the right to counsel is knowingly waived.

We say this is so because the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Maine compel such conclusion.

The statute under which the Department of Health and Welfare purported to act in the instant case (22 M.R.S.A. § 3792) gives jurisdiction to the Probate Court of the County or appropriate District Court to take custody of a child from natural parents and “order such child committed into the custody of the department or into the custody of any suitable person, provided that such person consents to accept custody of such child.” This may be done whenever “after hearing, it appears” that any allegation of the complaint that a child,

“ . . . named in the petition is living in circumstances which are seriously jeopardizing the health, welfare or morals of such child and is in need of protective custody . . . . ”

is true.

Both the Court in Kaufman and the single Justice below premised the conclusion reached on the action being civil in its nature.

Few courts considering neglect statutes have addressed themselves to the basic question of whether there is a substantive constitutional right in parents to raise their children. The Constitution itself provides no readily apparent answer. Nowhere is the raising of children mentioned in the Federal Constitution and the power to define and regulate domestic relations has [796]*796been generally thought to have been left to the states.

While the precise question here before us has never been squarely decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, there has been ample suggestion by that Court that the right to raise one’s children is of constitutional dimension.

Over half a century ago Mr. Justice McReynolds, speaking for the court in Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 43 S.Ct. 625, 67 L.Ed. 1042 (1922), said:

“The problem for our determination is whether the statute as construed and applied unreasonably infringes the liberty guaranteed to the plaintiff in error by the Fourteenth Amendment. ‘No State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.’
“While this Court has not attempted to define with exactness the liberty thus guaranteed, the term has received much consideration and some of the included things have been definitely stated. Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” (Emphasis supplied) 262 U.S. at 399, 43 S.Ct. at 626.

Later in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed 1070 (1924), the Court restated its view that there is a constitutionally protected right of parents to bring up their children when it said:

“The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in the Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.” 268 U.S. at 535, 45 S.Ct. at 573.

While this theory of substantive due process appeared to have been abandoned in Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.S. 726, 83 S.Ct. 1028, 10 L.Ed.2d 93 (1963), (a case involving a statute regulating the business of debt adjusting); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965) and most recently Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973), made it abundantly clear the theory of the existence of substantive due process is still viable. In Griswold both Mr. Justice Douglas, who delivered the opinion of the Court, and Mr. Justice Goldberg, in a concurring opinion1 in which he was joined by the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Brennan, referred to the penumbra of specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights.

Whatever may be the portion of the Bill of Rights giving rise to the constitutional protection of the right to raise one’s children, we are satisfied such protection exists under the Federal Constitution.

In Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 92 S.Ct. 1208, 31 L.Ed.2d 551 (1972), Mr. Justice White summarized earlier decisions of that Court emphasizing the importance of the family as follows:

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Bluebook (online)
303 A.2d 794, 1973 Me. LEXIS 288, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/danforth-v-state-department-of-health-and-welfare-me-1973.