Open the Dependency Courts

California attorney Lauren K Johnson's "Open The Juvenile Courts"
Article Featured In California Appellate Defense Counsel Quarterly Newsletter

VIEWPOINT
Open the Dependency Courts
by Lauren K. Johnson

In a 1913 Harpers Weekly article, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote of sunlight being the best of disinfectants. This year, Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) proposed a bill, AB 73, which would have let some sunshine in on some of the most secretive courts in our state, the juvenile dependency courts, by making them presumptively open. This is not the first bill of its kind to have been introduced in California, but in light of increased media attention surrounding child deaths in the juvenile dependency system, it was extremely well- timed.

Juvenile court confidentiality of records and proceedings was designed to protect juveniles from the stigma of participating in these proceedings. Perversely, confidentiality in juvenile proceedings also protects government actors from public scrutiny when they fail their charge to protect children and reunify families.

While Californians regularly learn about adult criminal cases in the press, they infrequently learn about abuses that occur in the dependency system because of the systems own closed-door rules. The public only hears about wrongdoing by government actors in this system after a child has died. Even then, child welfare agencies and counties fight against disclosure for fear of being sued for their negligent acts.

I strongly supported AB 73 and will support similar future legislation that seeks to let the sun shine in on the juvenile dependency system. As parents' counsel in the trial court and on appeal, I have witnessed social workers time and again exercise bad judgment with grave consequences.

Worse, I have litigated cases where social workers attempted to remove children from parents despite evidence that overwhelmingly proved these parents were factually innocent of abuse or neglect. In such cases, I have filed motions to open these cases to the press. To date, I have never had a court grant this motion. At the same time, I have never had a case in which I filed a media request survive the jurisdictional hearing. All were dismissed by the court at trial. In these cases, the government always pushed forward regardless, at no risk to public scrutiny for continuing to do the wrong thing.

Opponents of AB 73 claimed that the bill would result in a large-scale violation of the privacy interests of  dependent minors. But this would not be the case. The press is no more likely to find interest in the everyday matters of the juvenile Court than it is to report on every Criminal case on the docket. Ultimately, only important cases of public interest would be reported.

 The time has come for California to open its juvenile courts. Several states already have presumptively open courts without issue. The general consensus is that public access to court hearings in these states does not negatively impact children's privacy rights and positively impacts the handling of child abuse and neglect cases. An open courts system holds juvenile welfare officials more accountable while still allowing judges discretion to close individual hearings when appropriate. Transparency is one wav to help improve our child welfare system at a cost of, essentially, nothing.

CADC member Lauren K. Johnson is an Orange County attorney who handles juvenile dependency eases on behalf of parents in the trial court and on appeal throughout Southern California. {Editors note: The views expressed in this article are not necessarily shared by other CADC members or the CADC Board. As with everything we publish in Ca1App News, CADC members are more than welcome to submit their own views on this subject for publication.)