ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 17, 1996 TAG: 9612170064
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
Opening the courthouse door to a low-income woman who seeks the right to see her children again, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that states may not set high fees or other costs that effectively bar poor people from legal appeals in parental rights cases.
``No ties are more precious than those binding parent and child,'' said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking from the bench.
Her opinion for a 6-3 majority requires Mississippi court officials to waive a $2,352 transcript fee imposed on a young waitress who was appealing the loss of her two children.
Over the years, the Supreme Court has been reluctant to force the government to subsidize civil suits, many of which involve property disputes and money claims.
Monday's ruling cuts out a narrow exception for court orders that terminate parental rights.
These decrees ``work a unique kind of deprivation [and] involve the awesome authority of the state to destroy permanently all legal recognition of the parental relationship,'' Ginsburg said. Before finally taking away such a fundamental right, the state must at least allow the parent a chance to appeal, she said.
The ruling revives an appeal filed by Melissa L. Brooks, whose parental rights were terminated by a judge in Benton County, Miss. Most states waive court costs for poor people in parental rights cases, but the Mississippi courts have refused to make any accommodation for the poor.
In 1992, Brooks and her husband divorced and their two children were kept in his custody. After he remarried, the husband won a court order that allowed his new wife to adopt the children. Though no evidence was presented that Melissa Brooks had abused or mistreated her children, the judge nonetheless terminated her rights even to visit them.
Melissa Brooks was told that she had to pay $2 per page for a court transcript that ran nearly 1,000 pages, along with a $438 fee for other documents. Earning only $2.15 an hour as a waitress, Brooks said that she could not pay the costs.
The Mississippi Supreme Court then dismissed her appeal.
``In view of the magnitude and permanence of the loss at stake we hold that Mississippi may not deny Melissa L. Brooks, because of her poverty, access to appellate review to test the adequacy of the evidence on which she was judged unfit to remain a parent,'' Ginsburg said in the case.
``This is a grand Christmas present. This is the best news I've heard in a long time,'' Brooks said after the ruling. ``I'm going to take my case to the [state] Supreme Court now, and I hope I can get my rights back.''
She said she has not seen her children in three years.
Robert McDuff, the Jackson, Miss., attorney who took the case to the high court on behalf of Brooks, said the ruling ``affirms that in cases of this magnitude, the states cannot open their courthouses to the rich and close them to the poor.''
Knowing that the high court would be wary of ordering a broad right to free appeals in civil cases, McDuff stressed in his argument that the loss of a parental right is unique. That narrow focus almost surely helped in stitching together a majority for the ruling.
Ginsburg's opinion said that the court was not insisting on free appeals in all ``domestic relations matters such as divorce, paternity and child custody,'' but rather only in those that involve a ``parental termination decree.''
Her opinion was signed by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Justice Anthony Kennedy concurred in a separate opinion.
Dissenting, Justice Clarence Thomas faulted the majority for creating a ``new-found constitutional right to free transcripts.''
``The transcript rule reasonably obliges would-be appellants to bear the costs of availing themselves of a service the state chooses, but is not constitutionally required, to provide,'' Thomas said.
He urged the court in dissent to reverse its precedents allowing free appeals for the poor in criminal cases.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. File 1996 Melissa Brooks holds her only photo ofby CNBher children on her key chain. She hasn't seen them in three years.
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