Florida Supreme Court mandates closed parental-rights hearings

By The Associated Press

02.23.01

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The issue of parental rights must be decided in a closed courtroom, the Florida Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

In a case brought by a woman accused of making her child sick to draw attention to herself, the justices upheld a state law requiring that the public and press be excluded from such hearings.

A lawyer for the mother, who wants her parental-rights hearing open, said the 5-2 opinion would be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"There is no constitutional requirement that juvenile proceedings be presumptively open to the public," wrote Justice Peggy Quince for the majority. "The Legislature has validly declared that the public policy of the state requires the mandatory closing."

The state's paramount interest is the health and safety of children, and terminating parental rights is neither a criminal proceeding nor an intent to punish parents even though they may view it that way, Quince wrote.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees a right to public trials in criminal cases and court rulings have extended that to include most civil cases.

Kathy Bush, 43, of Coral Springs, contends that closing her parental rights case, a civil proceeding, would violate her right to an open trial. In a separate criminal case in Broward County, she was convicted of child abuse and fraud.

She was sentenced to five years in prison but is free pending appeal.

Prosecutors said she had Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a psychological disorder in which a parent causes illnesses in the child to get attention. Her daughter, Jennifer, now 13, was hospitalized 200 times and underwent about 40 operations including surgeries to remove her gall bladder, appendix and part of her intestines, before the state began investigating in 1996.

The woman and child, however, were well-known before then.

They went to Washington, D.C., in 1994 to lobby for health insurance improvements in the wake of mounting medical bills. Jennifer sat beside then-first lady Hillary Clinton at the White House. Mother and daughter also testified at congressional hearings.

The state took Jennifer from the family's home in April 1996, the day criminal charges were filed against the mother, and placed her with relatives. She has not been sick since then.

When the state sought to permanently end parental rights, a trial judge ruled that the law requiring closed hearings was unconstitutional. The 4th District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach disagreed, and Bush appealed to the state Supreme Court.

Bush's lawyer, Bruce Rogow, of Fort Lauderdale, said he was surprised but not disappointed by the high court's decision.

"I was hoping we would lose this case because it will provide a direct ticket to the (U.S.) Supreme Court," Rogow said.

Rogow disagreed with the justices' characterization of parental-rights termination cases as being "juvenile" proceedings. He said they involve taking away the most precious right parents have.

In oral arguments before the justices last year, he contended the state could not infringe on a fundamental right without a compelling reason and that the law must be carefully and narrowly written to address only that reason.

The dissenting justices, Harry Lee Anstead and Barbara Pariente, conceded there is no presumption of openness for parental-rights hearings but contended that does not mean all should be closed.

Both wrote in separate dissents that judges should be able to weigh the interests of children, parents and the public and then decide on a case-by-case basis as state supreme courts in New Jersey and Georgia have done.

Pariente noted that state law makes similar child-dependency hearings open to the public but gives judges the discretion to close them. Although the interests of a child should come first, the rights of the parents and public should not be ignored, Anstead wrote.

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