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High court reaffirms parents' rights in child-rearing decisions

Gary and Jenifer Troxel with some of their grandchildren

June 5, 2000
Web posted at: 3:44 p.m. EDT (1944 GMT)

By Raju Chebium
CNN Interactive Correspondent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the Constitution gives "fit" parents the preeminent right to decide how best to raise their children and forbids states from making such decisions.

The court, in a 6-3 decision, struck down a "breathtakingly broad" Washington state law that allowed judges to award visitation to any interested party provided the visits were in the children's best interest -- even if the parents disagreed.

The court said the law violates the 14th Amendment's due process clause, which bars the government from interfering in the private lives of its citizens.

FULL TEXT Opinion: Troxel v. Granville (FindLaw) Case briefs: Troxell v. Granville (FindLaw)

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Jenifer and Gary Troxel invoked the Washington law to spend more time with their granddaughters, Isabelle and Natalie. The girls' mother, Tommie Granville, was not against the Troxels visiting the girls, but did object to the amount of visitation time the grandparents had sought.

The Supreme Court ruled that Granville -- and by extension, all fit parents -- have the final say in child-rearing decisions, such as who visits their children and for how long. The court also noted that the Troxels were not seeking visitation because Granville was an unfit mother.

"So long as a parent adequately cares for his or her children (i.e., is fit), there will normally be no reason for the State to inject itself into the private realm of the family to further question the ability of that parent to make the best decisions concerning the rearing of ... children," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in the majority opinion.

"In an ideal world, parents might always seek to cultivate the bonds between grandparents and their grandchildren," O'Connor wrote. "Needless to say, however, our world is far from perfect, and in it the decision whether such an intergenerational relationship would be beneficial in any specific case is for the parent to make in the first instance. And, if a fit parent's decision of the kind at issue here becomes subject to judicial review, the court must accord at least some special weight to the parent's own determination."

O'Connor wrote that the rule is broad because it allows "any person" to seek visitation and does not require judges to consider a parent's objections. She wrote that most other states give interested parties visitation rights only if the parents have said no to any visits -- which is not the case in Troxel v. Granville.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist and justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Clarence Thomas agreed with O'Connor. Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy disagreed.

The dissent

Stevens wrote in the dissenting opinion that the children's wishes would be ignored if parents have the sole authority to make child-rearing decisions, and "even a fit parent is capable of treating a child like a mere possession."

Parents' constitutional rights were not "trammeled" by the state law, Stevens wrote, because the law "merely gives an individual -- with whom a child may have an established relationship -- the procedural right to ask the State to act as arbiter ... between the parent's protected interests and the child's."

He said the due process clause "leaves room for States to consider the impact on a child of possibly arbitrary parental decisions that neither serve nor are motivated by the best interests of the child."

He added that the Supreme Court should not have accepted the case in the first place because the Washington court had already ruled on the law's legal validity and asked the legislature to draft a narrower statute.

Background of the case

The case resulted from a family disagreement gone awry.

The Troxels went to a Washington court to earn the right to visit their two grandchildren after the 1993 suicide of their son, Brad. Brad Troxel and Granville never married.

In 1995, a trial judge awarded the Troxels visitation of one weekend per month, one weekend during the summer and four hours on each of the children's birthdays. A state appeals court reversed that decision.

The state supreme court ruled that the law violates the parents' due process rights and struck down the statue saying the state could not interfer with parents' right to rear their children unless the children were in danger.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the state supreme court Monday. The nation's highest court accepted the case in September 1999 and heard arguments in January.

The ruling's impact

Monday's ruling is likely to spur a closer scrutiny of similar laws in other states -- virtually all states have laws governing visitation by nonparents.

Constitutional lawyer David Hudson of Nashville, Tennessee, said he does not think the statutes in other states are in danger of being overturned because Washington's law was uniquely broad.

Describing the Monday ruling as a "victory for parental rights," Hudson said, "This decision does not sound the death knell of grandparent visitation. ... I don't think this is going to have a large impact on other states, who have safeguards built to protect fit parents."