Maples, Application of

• Decision Date: 10 April 1978
• Docket Number: No. 60187,60187
• Citation: 563 S.W.2d 760
• Parties: Application of Annetta Louise MAPLES.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 760

563 S.W.2d 760

Application of Annetta Louise MAPLES.

No. 60187.

Supreme Court of Missouri, En Banc.

April 10, 1978.

John F. Michaels, Kansas City, for appellant.

James O. Swaney, Jr., Kansas City, for respondent.

RENDLEN, Judge.

Annetta Louise Maples applied to the Circuit Court of Jackson County for an order to open the records of her 1949 adoption under authority of § 453.120, RSMo 1969. That section provides:

"The files and records of the court in adoption proceedings shall not be open to inspection, or copy, by any person or persons, except upon an order of the court expressly permitting the same and pursuant to written application."

She was less than one year of age when placed with her adoptive parents and not yet two when a decree was entered finalizing her adoption as the lawful child of the new parents. During her youth appellant learned of the adoption and troubled by this knowledge she eventually, when twenty-eight years of age and financially independent, moved to open the records. Appellant concedes she had not sought such information from her adoptive parents nor had she asked them to see the "adoption papers . . . because they would be hurt." However, risking that hurt and the possibility of disturbing their relationship, she commenced a search for her natural parents in 1973 requesting information from the Jackson County Family Children's Services Social Agency concerning her "birth specifics." In response the supervisor of the adoption services of the Jackson County Juvenile Court provided much background information as well as particulars concerning the health and physical condition of her natural parents and later a certified copy of the decree of adoption. Not content with this, Miss Maples applied for an order to inspect the entire record under § 453.120 and at the conclusion of the hearing that followed, the court denied her application. ¹ The cause was heard ex parte as no provision appears in the statute requiring an adversary proceeding; yet in an appropriate case, as hereinafter discussed, persons concerning whom information is sought from the records should be afforded an opportunity to participate in the proceedings.

An appeal was lodged with the Kansas City district of the Court of Appeals and transferred to this court prior to opinion under Art. V, § 11 of the Missouri Constitution of 1945 as amended. A copy of the notice of appeal was delivered to the Department of Juvenile Services of the Jackson County Circuit Court and that office determined to appear as Respondent, effectively (though not formally) representing the interests of the state, the natural parents and others whose interests might be affected.

Appellant contends: (1) Section 453.120 is unconstitutional in that it impermissibly abridges her (a) First Amendment right "to receive" information, (b) Fourteenth Amendment right to "liberty" and "privacy" and (c) Fourteenth Amendment right to "equal protection of the law." (2) The trial court, construing the statute too narrowly improperly denied itself authority to exercise discretion when determining the cause on its merits.

Conceding in oral argument that her challenge to the statute's constitutionality rests principally on the trial court's narrow construction of the section, appellant nevertheless insists that though a broader statutory interpretation might be adopted, she does not waive the constitutional issue. Respondent, on the other hand, maintains that because the application contains no reference to the constitutional issues and because they were not argued to the trial court, they are not cognizable on appeal. This argument overlooks the fact that with her application appellant filed an "affidavit" and "memorandum of points and authorities" which by reference were expressly incorporated as a part of the pleading; these sufficiently raised the constitutional issues at the trial level and respondent's contention is without merit.

I THE CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES

Appellant first contends the statute is violative of her First Amendment right to receive information. Generally it can be said the First Amendment protects the right to receive information and ideas, and as held in Martin v. Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, l.c. 147, 63 S.Ct. 862, 865, 87 L.Ed. 1313 (1943) the state may not indulge "the naked restriction of the dissemination of ideas." There the court invalidated a city ordinance limiting distribution of handbills and advertising matters and held it was not justified by the minor nuisance caused the community in clearing litter from its streets. The court however added, "(y)et the peace, good order, and comfort of the community may imperatively require regulation of the time, place and manner of distribution." l.c. 143, 63 S.Ct. 863. Appellant also cites Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 89 S.Ct. 1243, 22 L.Ed.2d 542 (1969) which struck a Georgia anti-obscenity statute and Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965) declaring unconstitutional a Connecticut statute forbidding the use of contraceptive devices and reversing the conviction of a licensed physician who advised his patient, a married woman, on the best contraceptive for her use. In these cases the state forbade the free flow of ideas from one person to another. Such is not our case. The information sought here is the product of the judicial process, gathered under the scheme of the adoption laws. Control of these records to promote this highly desirable system stands in contrast to the prevention of the transfer of handbills, films or medical advice from one person to another in the manner of the statutes in the cited cases. It was the state's interference with the interchange of ideas and materials between persons that the Court invalidated in Stanley and Griswold as violative of the individual's First Amendment rights. In the case at bar, the state's protection of the adoption process by control of its judicial records does not rise to the level of an unconstitutional infringement of appellant's First Amendment right to receive information but rather is the exercise of a valid state interest, balancing conflicting rights of privacy and protecting the integrity of the adoption process which could suffer if the confidentiality of the records were diminished.

Applicant next argues her right to "liberty" and "privacy" as protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution is abridged by the statute's interference with her "family relationships." She relies on Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 43 S.Ct. 625, 67 L.Ed. 1042 (1923) wherein a Nebraska statute prohibiting the teaching of any modern foreign language to children prior to the ninth grade was declared unconstitutional. Also cited is Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973) in which the Court held the Texas criminal law proscribing the procuring of abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving a mother's life was violative of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court there found the Fourteenth Amendment protects the right of privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy, and the state could not override such right in the manner of the Texas statute; the Court added however, that the state had a legitimate interest in protecting both the pregnant woman's health and the potentiality of human life, each of which grew and reached a compelling point at some stages during the pregnancy. Appellant's reliance on these cases is misplaced. In Meyer, it was the flow of information from teacher to student which the state improperly abridged under the Nebraska statute. Similarly, through the Texas Criminal Statute the state invaded the private life of the pregnant mother, interrupting the free flow of medical advice from her doctor and restricting her actions under that advice. Here, something quite different occurs; the natural parents' right of privacy is shielded by the statute but appellant insists the state strip the anonymity they believed was theirs and divulge the information received under a conditional cloak of confidentiality. It is important to note, that we quite properly are not told and need not know if the natural parents consented to the adoption or the parental rights were severed by reason of abandonment or neglect. But for whatever reason, the state at the behest of those concerned undertook through the adoption process to sever the parental relationship, award custody and establish a new relationship of parent and child. Much of the information coming into the court's records during that process is for good reason treated as a confidence, offering a fresh start to the parties so that natural parents making this agonizing decision are assured the parent-child relationship will be completely severed, both legally and socially and may put behind the mistakes and misfortunes precipitating this fateful act. They are assisted in this traumatic experience by the knowledge that the records may be compromised only on order of court and that neither the child nor the adoptive parents may question why they consented to the adoption or the circumstances of the abandonment or neglect. If it were otherwise, the adopted child might reenter their lives with disastrous results. There must be finality for the natural parents and a new beginning; if there is a right of privacy not to be lightly infringed, it would seem to be theirs. Graphic examples of the natural parents' need to privacy come readily to mind. Assume an illegitimate birth followed by adoption and thereafter the natural mother marries and has children by that marriage. Should the adopted child be permitted, through state action, to present himself at the home of her new family and lay bare the tragic secrets of the past? We think not. Or consider the situation in which a married woman, whose husband is absent, (perhaps overseas...