Lehman v. Lycoming County Children Services Agency, 80-2177
| Decision Date | 30 June 1982 |
| Docket Number | No. 80-2177,80-2177 |
| Citation | 458 U.S. 502,102 S.Ct. 3231,73 L.Ed.2d 928 |
| Parties | Marjorie LEHMAN, etc., Petitioner v. LYCOMING COUNTY CHILDREN'S SERVICES AGENCY |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Petitioner voluntarily placed her three sons in the legal custody of respondent county agency, which in turn placed them in foster homes. Thereafter, a Pennsylvania state court terminated petitioner's parental rights with respect to her sons because of parental incapacity, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed. Petitioner then filed an action in Federal District Court, seeking a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a), which requires a district court to entertain an application for such a writ in behalf "of a person in custody" pursuant to a state-court judgment in alleged violation of the Federal Constitution. She requested a declaration of the invalidity of the Pennsylvania statute under which her parental rights were terminated and an order releasing her sons to her custody. The District Court dismissed the petition on the ground that respondent's custody over petitioner's sons was not the type of custody to which § 2254(a) may be addressed. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
Held: Section 2254(a) does not confer jurisdiction on federal courts to consider collateral challenges to state-court judgments involuntarily terminating parental rights. Pp. 508-516.
(a) Although the scope of the federal writ of habeas corpus has been extended beyond that which the most literal reading of the statute might require, the writ has not been considered a generally available federal remedy for every violation of federal rights. The writ's availability has been limited to challenges to state-court judgments in situations where, as a result of a state-court criminal conviction, a petitioner has suffered substantial restraints not shared by the public generally, and the petitioner has been found to be "in custody" within the meaning of § 2254(a). Here, petitioner's children are not in the "custody" of the State in the way in which this term has been used in determining the availability of the writ of habeas corpus. They are in the "custody" of their foster parents in essentially the same way, and to the same extent, other children are in the custody of their natural or adoptive parents. They suffer no restraint on liberty not shared by the public generally, cf. Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U.S. 236, 83 S.Ct. 373, 9 L.Ed.2d 285; Hensley v. Municipal Court, 411 U.S. 345, 93 S.Ct. 1571, 36 L.Ed.2d 294, nor do they suffer "collateral consequences" sufficient to outweigh the need for finality, cf. Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U.S. 234, 88 S.Ct. 1556, 20 L.Ed.2d 554. To extend the federal writ to challenges to state child-custody decisions based on alleged constitutional defects collateral to the actual custody decision would be an unprecedented expansion of the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Pp. 508-512.
(b) Federalism and the exceptional need for finality in child-custody disputes also argue strongly against the grant of the writ here. Extended uncertainty for the children would be inevitable in many cases if federal courts had jurisdiction to relitigate state custody decisions. Pp. 512-514.
(c) Habeas corpus has been used in child-custody cases in many States and in England, and 28 U.S.C. § 2255, authorizing federal-court collateral review of federal decisions, could be construed to include the type of custody to which petitioner's children are subject. But reliance on what may be appropriate within the federal system or within a state system is of little force where, as in this case, a state judgment is attacked collaterally in a federal court. Petitioner would have the federal judicial system entertain a writ that is not time-barred to challenge collaterally a final judgment entered in a state judicial system. Pp. 514-515.
3rd Cir., 648 F.2d 135, affirmed.
Martin Guggenheim, Brooklyn, N. Y., for petitioner.
Charles F. Greevy, III, Williamsport, Pa., for respondent.
The question presented is whether the habeas corpus statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2254, confers jurisdiction on the federal courts to consider collateral challenges to state-court judgments involuntarily terminating parental rights.
The facts of this case are described in detail in In re William L., 477 Pa. 322, 383 A.2d 1228, cert. denied, sub nom. Lehman v. Lycoming County Children's Services, 439 U.S. 880, 99 S.Ct. 216, 58 L.Ed.2d 192 (1978), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision terminating the parental rights of petitioner Marjorie Lehman with respect to three sons born in 1963, 1965, and 1969.1 In 1971, Ms. Lehman discovered that she was pregnant again. Because of housing and other problems related to the care of her sons, Ms. Lehman voluntarily placed them in the legal custody of the Lycoming County Children's Services Agency, and it placed them in foster homes.
Although Ms. Lehman visited her sons monthly, she did not request their return until 1974. At that point, the Lycoming County Children's Services Agency initiated parental termination proceedings. In those proceedings, the Orphan's Court Division of the Lycoming County Court of Common Pleas heard testimony from Agency caseworkers, a psychologist, nutrition aides, petitioner, and the three sons.2 The judge concluded: 3 In re Lehman, Nos. 2986, 2987 and 2988, p. 4 (Ct.Common Pleas, Lycoming County, Pa., June 3, 1976).4 The court therefore declared that petitioner's parental rights respecting the three sons were terminated.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the termination order based on "parental incapacity, which does not involve parental misconduct." In re William L., supra, at 331, 383 A.2d, at 1232. It held that the legislature's power to protect the physical and emotional needs of children authorized termination in the absence of serious harm or risk of serious harm to the children and in the absence of parental misconduct. The court stressed that, "[i]n the instant cases, the basis for termination is several years of demonstrated parental incapacity. . . ." Ibid. It also held that the statute was not unconstitutionally vague either on its face or as applied.
Petitioner sought this Court's review in a petition for certiorari rather than by appeal.5 We denied the petition. Lehman v. Lycoming County Children's Services, 439 U.S. 880, 99 S.Ct. 216, 58 L.Ed.2d 192 (1978). Petitioner then filed the instant proceeding on January 16, 1979, in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, seeking a writ of habeas cor- pus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 2241 and 2254. Petitioner requested (i) a declaration of the invalidity of the Pennsylvania statute under which her parental rights were terminated; (ii) a declaration that petitioner was the legal parent of the children; and (iii) an order releasing the children to her custody unless within 60 days an appropriate state court judicially determined that the best interest of the children required that temporary custody remain with the State.
The District Court dismissed the petition without a hearing. Relying primarily on Sylvander v. New England Home for Little Wanderers, 584 F.2d 1103 (CA 1 1978), the court concluded that "the custody maintained by the Respondent over the three Lehman children is not that type of custody to which the federal habeas corpus remedy may be addressed." Lehman v. Lycoming County Children's Services Agency, Civ. No. 79-65 (MD Pa.1979), reprinted in App. to Pet. for Cert. 135a, 147a.
Sitting en banc, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the District Court's order of dismissal by a divided vote of six to four. 648 F.2d 135 (1981). No majority opinion was written. A plurality of four, in an opinion written by Judge Garth, concluded that "disputes of the nature addressed here and which essentially involve no more than the question of who shall raise a child to maturity, do not implicate the federal interest in personal liberty sufficiently to warrant the extension of federal habeas corpus." Id., at 146. In support of this conclusion, Judge Garth reasoned that "[i]t is not the liberty interest of the children that is sought to be protected in such a case, but only the right of the particular parent to raise them." Id., at 140 (footnote omitted).
A second plurality of four, in an opinion written by Judge Adams wrote that it "would appear to be both unwise and impolitic for the federal courts to uncover a whole new font of jurisdiction. . . ." Id., at 151. He would have disposed of the case on the ground that Ms. Lehman did not have stand- ing to assert a habeas corpus action on behalf of her children. See id., at 151-155. This view was based on the conclusion that once a parent's rights have been terminated in a state proceeding, a parent is no longer presumed to represent the interest of the child. See id., at 153-154.6
The question presented to this Court can be stated more fully as whether federal habeas corpus jurisdiction, under § 2254, may be invoked to challenge the constitutionality of a state statute under which a State has obtained custody of children and has terminated involuntarily the parental rights of their natural parent. As this is a question of importance not heretofore considered by this Court, and one over which the Circuits are divided,7 we granted certiorari. 454 U.S. 813, 102 S.Ct. 89, 70 L.Ed.2d 82 (1981). We now affirm.
Petitioner seeks habeas corpus collateral review by a federal court of the Pennsylvania decision. Her application was filed under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a):
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