Justia Government & Administrative Law Opinion Summaries

A father appealed various procedural actions taken by the superior court in his divorce and custody proceeding. Appearing pro se, he alleged that the court’s expedited procedures violated his due process rights and reflected judicial bias. He also argued that the court abused its discretion in its award of attorney’s fees. Because the court’s procedures did not violate the father’s due process rights and the father has not shown that the court was biased against him, the Supreme Court affirmed the procedural decisions of the superior court. But because the superior court did not follow the established process for the award of attorney’s fees, the Supreme Court reversed the superior court’s attorney’s fees order and remanded the case for further proceedings.

Bani Chatterjee and Taya King are two women who were in a committed, long-term domestic relationship when they agreed to bring a child into their relationship. King adopted a child from Russia. Chatterjee supported King and Child financially, lived in the family home, and co parented Child for a number of years before their commitment to each other foundered and they dissolved their relationship. Chatterjee never adopted Child. After they ended their relationship, King moved to Colorado and sought to prevent Chatterjee from having any contact with Child. Chatterjee filed a petition in the district court to establish parentage and determine custody and timesharing. Chatterjee alleged that she was a presumed natural parent under the former codification of the New Mexico Uniform Parentage Act, (NMSA), and was the equitable or de facto parent of Child, and as such, was entitled to relief. In response to Chatterjee’s Petition, King filed a motion to dismiss. The district court dismissed the Petition for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Chatterjee then appealed to the Court of Appeals, which affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded to the district court. The Court of Appeals held that Chatterjee did not have standing to seek joint custody absent a showing of King’s unfitness because she is neither the biological nor the adoptive mother of Child. The Court further held that presumptions establishing a father and child relationship cannot be applied to women, and a mother and child relationship can only be established through biology or adoption. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether Chatterjee pleaded sufficient facts in her Petition to give her standing to pursue joint custody of Child under the Dissolution of Marriage Act. The Court concluded based on the facts and circumstances of this case, that the facts pleaded by Chatterjee were sufficient to confer standing on her as a natural mother because: (1) the plain language of the UPA instructs courts to apply criteria for establishing a presumption that a man is a natural parent, to women because it is practicable for a woman to hold a child out as her own by, among other things, providing full-time emotional and financial support for the child; (2) commentary by the drafters of the UPA supports application of the provisions related to determining paternity to the determination of maternity; (3) the approach in this opinion is consistent with how courts in other jurisdictions have interpreted their UPAs, which contain language similar to the New Mexico UPA; and (4) New Mexico’s public policy is to encourage the support of children, financial and otherwise, by providers willing and able to care for the child.

Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, 1 U.S.C. 7, denies federal economic and other benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts and to surviving spouses from those couples, by defining "marriage" as "only a legal union between one man and one woman." "Spouse" refers "only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife." DOMA absolves states from recognizing same-sex marriages solemnized in other states; prevents same-sex married couples from filing joint federal tax returns, affecting tax burdens; prevents a surviving same-sex spouse from collecting Social Security survivor benefits; leaves federal employees unable to share health insurance and other benefits with same-sex spouses. DOMA may result in loss of federal funding of programs such as Medicaid and veterans cemeteries if states recognize same-sex marriages in determining income or allowing burials. The district court declared Section 3 unconstitutional. The First Circuit affirmed, but stayed injunctive relief, anticipating certiorari review. The court applied "a closer than usual review" based on discrepant impact among married couples and on the importance of state interests in regulating marriage and tested the rationales for DOMA, considering Supreme Court precedent limiting which rationales can be counted and the force of certain rationales.

Several months after being granted sole legal and physical custody of Patrick D. (Child), Brian D. and Peggy D. (Grandparents) filed a petition for guardianship and custody pursuant to the Kinship Guardianship Act. Julie Ann D. (Mother), Grandparents’ daughter, consented to the guardianship, but Freedom C. (Father) opposed it. After an evidentiary hearing, the district court found both Mother and Father unfit to raise Child. The district court granted guardianship to Grandparents, granted time-sharing privileges to both Mother and Father, and held that it would review the guardianship arrangement in twenty-four months. Father appealed to the Court of Appeals, which reversed the district court. The Court of Appeals held that the consent provision in Section 40-10B–8(B)(1) was not satisfied because both parents did not consent to the guardianship. The Supreme Court granted a petition for writ of certiorari filed by Grandparents to consider: (1) whether application of the Act is appropriate under the circumstances of this case; and (2) whether any of the prerequisites for its application were met. Because the Court concluded that Section 40-10B-8(B)(3) was met under the facts, circumstances, and procedure of this case, the Court reversed the Court of Appeals and remand to the district court to schedule a hearing to review the guardianship arrangement as previously anticipated by its order.

Respondent gave birth to twins conceived through in vitro fertilization using her deceased husband's frozen sperm. Respondent applied for Social Security survivors benefits for the twins, relying on 42 U.S.C. 416(e) of the Social Security Act, which defined child to mean, inter alia, "the child or legally adopted child of an [insured] individual." The Social Security Administration (SSA), however, identified subsequent provisions of the Act, sections 416(h)(2) and (h)(3)(C), as critical, and read them to entitle biological children to benefits only if they qualified for inheritance from the decedent under state intestacy law, or satisfied one of the statutory alternatives to that requirement. The Court concluded that the SSA's reading was better attuned to the statute's text and its design to benefit primarily those supported by the deceased wage earner in his or her lifetime. And even if the SSA's longstanding interpretation was not the only reasonable one, it was at least a permissible construction that garnered the Court's respect under Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.

A father appealed the termination of his parental rights to his daughter, an Indian child within the meaning of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). He challenged the superior court's findings that the Office of Children's Services (OCS) made active efforts to prevent the breakup of his Indian family, arguing that OCS failed to investigate placement with his extended family members and did not provide him with adequate visitation and remedial services. Upon review, the Supreme Court concluded that OCS made active efforts, and accordingly affirmed OCS's decision.

Plaintiff-Appellant Ronald Parizek appealed a district court order that affirmed an administrative enforcement action which placed a lien on his personal property held by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The State, through the High Intensity Enforcement Unit of Child Support Enforcement, placed a lien on any funds or accounts the Department was holding for Plaintiff to secure payment for his past due child support obligation. Plaintiff unsuccessfully requested judicial review of the lien, arguing the lien was improper because the Department was not a financial institution and therefore the property did not qualify for an account lien. Plaintiff them moved to dismiss the lien with prejudice, arguing the lien was improper because the Department was not a financial institution and an account lien could not be enforced against the accounts it managed, and his spending account did not qualify as personal property. On appeal to the Supreme Court, Plaintiff argued the Department and the State violated state law by entering into an agreement or relationship under the Administrative Agencies Practice Act, N.D.C.C. ch. 28-32, with the sole purpose of enforcement of an administrative action upon him. Furthermore, Plaintiff claimed the district court erred in denying his motion to dismiss the lien without allowing him a hearing as he requested. He maintained the court erred when it failed to allow him 14 days from the service of the "notice of proposed order" before denying his motion to dismiss. Upon review, the Supreme Court found that the order denying Plaintiff's motion to dismiss was filed after the notice of appeal, and therefore it was not appealed and was not properly before the Court.

The Supreme Court granted allocatur in this case to consider the Superior Court's application of the standard of review and to evaluate the relevance of a parent's incarceration to a trial court's decision to terminate a father's parental rights. G.P. (Father), then nineteen, and B.D. (Mother), then approximately seventeen, were involved in an intimate relationship prior to Father's incarceration in December 2004 for the shooting death of his stepfather. While Father was incarcerated, S.P. (Child) was born in May 2005. After Child’s birth, Mother took her to visit Father several times while he was incarcerated at the county prison awaiting trial. In December 2005, Child was declared dependent, when Mother tested positive for THC, a chemical found in marijuana, and was involved in a domestic assault in the presence of Child. Following the declaration of Child’s dependency, Mother and Child apparently moved between several foster homes and Child’s grandmother’s home. In 2007, Child and Youth Services (CYS) filed an emergency shelter petition on behalf of Child when it could not ensure Child's safety. In 2008, Mother voluntarily relinquished her parental rights to Child. At a hearing, testimony was presented that revealed Child suffered from developmental delays and was possibly autistic. A year later at another hearing, CYS moved to terminate Father's parental rights. As applied to this case, the Supreme Court concluded the Superior Court erred in reversing the trial court’s decision to terminate Father’s parental rights: "the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it concluded that “the conditions and causes of the incapacity . . . [could not] or [would] not be remedied” by Father."

In combined cases, the Supreme Court examined the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) to decide whether several issues relating to the Act's notice provision mandate notice be sent to the appropriate tribe or to the Secretary of the Interior. Because the question of whether notice violations occurred in these cases began with determining whether the tribal-notice requirement was triggered, the Court first considered what indicia of Indian heritage sufficed to trigger the notice requirement. Further, the Court then considered whether a parent could waive the rights granted by ICWA to an Indian child's tribe and determine the appropriate recordkeeping requirements necessary to document the trial court's efforts to comply with ICWA's notice provision. "While it is impossible to articulate a precise rule that will encompass every possible factual situation, in light of the interests protected by ICWA, the potentially high costs of erroneously concluding that notice need not be sent, and the relatively low burden of erring in favor of requiring notice, we think the standard for triggering the notice requirement of 25 USC 1912(a) must be a cautionary one." Upon review, the Supreme Court held that: (1) sufficiently reliable information of virtually any criteria on which tribal membership might be based suffices to trigger the notice requirement; (2) a parent of an Indian child cannot waive the separate and independent ICWA rights of an Indian child's tribe and that the trial court must maintain a documentary record; and (3) the proper remedy for an ICWA-notice violation is to conditionally reverse the trial court and remand for resolution of the ICWA-notice issue.

The appellant in this case, Kenneth Adler, had been appointed as guardian ad litem for the children of Plaintiff-Respondent Joseph Abolafia and Defendant-Respondent Rebecca Reeves who were involved in a proceeding to modify the custody provisions of their divorce decree. After the parties reached an agreement to resolve their dispute and the magistrate court terminated Appellant as guardian ad litem. Appellant sought to appeal, challenging his termination. The district court held Appellant did not have standing to appeal, and dismissed the appeal and awarded attorney fees to the parents. Upon review, the Supreme Court affirmed the district court: "Although he may have been miffed by his termination as guardian ad litem, injury to his pride is not justiciable. After he was terminated as guardian ad litem . . ., his actions in appealing to the district court have simply been those of an officious intermeddler. He had no standing to appeal."