Thursday, 13 January 2000
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/LA0782.html
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - While acknowledging a ``special relationship''
between grandparents and grandchildren, Supreme Court justices
appeared troubled by state laws that give grandparents broad rights
to seek court-ordered visitation against parents' wishes.
In an intense debate over an emotionally charged issue, the nation's
highest court yesterday assessed two competing values - a state's
desire to promote children's best interests and parents' right
to raise their children free from government interference.
The way the justices resolve that conflict, in a decision expected
by late June, could touch every corner of America. Sixty million
Americans are grandparents. So are six of the court's nine members.
A majority of the justices voiced grave concerns about a Washington
state law that allowed ``any person,'' relative or non-relative,
to win a court-ordered right to see a child any time such visitation
was found to be in a child's best interest.
``Breathtakingly broad,'' Justice Sandra Day O'Connor called it
before asking one lawyer, ``Do you defend it . . . any person,
any time?''
Early in the hour-long session of arguments, Chief Justice William
H. Rehnquist asked whether the law might allow a little girl's
``great-aunt'' to ``come in and say, `I want to take her to the
movies every Friday.' ''
And Justice Stephen G. Breyer indicated he was not about to favor
a law that would grant visitation rights to ``an accordion player
who wants to visit once a year,'' even if music lessons were in
a child's best interest.
The state law also came under spirited questioning from Justices
Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
But Breyer also asked about the ``special'' nature of a case involving
grandparents seeking more time with their grandchildren. And Justice
David H. Souter, otherwise hostile to Washington's law, discussed
the ``special relationship'' a grandparent might have with a grandchild.
Justice John Paul Stevens, at 79 the court's oldest member, asked
several questions focusing on a parent's asserted ``absolute veto''
power over how often grandparents can see their grandchildren.
``Is there no relief for a grandparent?'' he asked.
While all 50 states have laws allowing grandparents and others
to seek visitation after divorces or under other circumstances,
only a handful of those laws go as far as Washington's. The state's
Supreme Court struck down the law in late 1998, ruling it violated
parents' rights.
That decision wiped out an Anacortes, Wash., couple's legal right
to see their two granddaughters.
Gary and Jennifer Troxel, who sat through the court proceeding,
seek to regain the right to see the two girls, 8-year-old Isabelle
and 10-year-old Natalie, more often than their mother, Tommie
Granville Wynn, is willing to let them.
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