Parham v. J. R.

Appellants
Parham, Commissioner, Department of Human Resources, et al.
Appellees
J. R., et al.
Appellants' Claim
That a federal district court had erred in ruling that a minor was allowed ahearing prior to being committed to a mental institution.
Chief Lawyer for Appellants
John L. Cromartie, Jr.
Chief Lawyer for Appellees
R. Douglas Lackey
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger (writing for the Court), Lewis F. Powell,Jr., William H. Rehnquist, Potter Stewart, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
20 June 1979
Decision
Overturned a lower court's decision that would have barred the commitment ofminors to mental institutions without a prior hearing.
Significance
Halted a trend that had granted minors increasing constitutional protections.
The 1979 Supreme Court ruling in Parham v. J. R. reversed a federal court decision that banned minors from being committed to mental health facilities without an adversary hearing; in essence, it ruled that parents did havethe right to commit their children.
Georgia law allowed a minor to be admitted for observation to a psychiatric hospital upon request of a parent; the staff would then judge a patient's suitability for treatment and could suggest an indefinite stay. In presenting itscase, the state proved that many minors admitted to state-funded mental-health institutions had already undergone outpatient treatment at a community health center. In most cases, a minor would not be admitted to the separate juvenile unit of a psychiatric facility without a referral from a community clinic. One hospital, however, had a higher rate of admitting patients without referrals, and that was Milledgeville's Central State Regional Hospital.
Two Tragic Predicaments
J. L. had been admitted to Central State Hospital in 1970 when he was six years old. He was described as hyperkinetic and aggressive and had been expelledfrom school. His mother and stepfather admitted him after two months of outpatient treatment had proven unsuccessful. From his admittance in 1970, various home-visit programs were attempted, to re-integrate him with his family andthe outside community, but his mother and stepfather maintained they could not control him, and relinquished parental rights in 1974. Hospital employeesfamiliar with J. L.'s course of therapy suggested that he would do better ina foster home with a more sympathetic support structure, but Georgia's Department of Family and Children Services was unable to provide this. In 1975, J.L. filed suit requesting a "less drastic" treatment option than being confined indefinitely to Central State Hospital.
The co-plaintiff in the original suit, J. R., had been removed from his parental home as an infant because of neglect. He lived in a total of seven fosterhomes, and was eventually termed disruptive and incorrigible. He had also undergone outpatient care, in this case for several months, but made little progress. His final set of foster parents requested him to be removed from theirhome, and the Department of Family and Children Services stepped in and, having nowhere else to place him, petitioned for his admission to Central StateHospital. Upon admission, doctors and specialists conducted interviews with J. R. and found him to be borderline retarded. His suit also requested placement in a less drastic environment.
The Due Process Argument
The original claim filed by J. R. and J. L. with Georgia's federal district court asserted that confinement to Central State Hospital violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process, which states in part that no state may"deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law." A panel of three judges agreed, and ordered Georgia's Department of Familyand Children Services to come up with a "non-hospital" facility for such minors. A recent National Institute for Mental Health study cited in the case found that most of the elderly patients had been committed as children, supporting the feeling that such "untreatable" minors were "dumped" there because the state, or their family, had no other options--and sadly, might remain therethe rest of their natural lives.
Georgia authorities, represented by its commissioner for its Department of Human Resources, appealed, and the case was first argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in December of 1977. It was re-argued in October of 1978, and decidedon 20 June 1979. The first minor named in the case, J. L., died before it was heard.
Minors and the Constitution
Since the 1960s, the American judicial system had come to recognize that juveniles and the mentally challenged or mentally ill have many of the same rights as other Americans. In step with other successful legal challenges of the civil-rights era, there came an acknowledgment from the state that certain societal institutions, such as the family, and the medical profession, were indeed fallible. The Court's decision on Parham v. J. R. reversed this trend. In its decision written by Chief Justice Burger, the Court ruled that anadversary hearing is not required for parents to commit a child to a mental-health facility (or in the case of wards of the court, by the state agency acting in loco parentis).
The Court found that professionals working in the separate units for minors within Georgia's psychiatric hospitals, including Central State Hospital, screened admissions adequately, and reviewed their progress regularly. Furthermore, the Court noted that parents generally act in the best interests of theirchildren, and that juveniles are incapable of making their own decisions regarding relatively weighty or complex issues. Supporting this was the assertionthat no adversary hearing is required when a minor needs surgery. It did, however, concur that there was some risk regarding parents' committing their children to psychiatric facilities, and suggested a "neutral factfinder" inquiry be undertaken at the time of admission, which would include an interview with the minor.
Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Stevens concurred with the majority opinion as well as dissented from it. Criticism of the ruling centered on the observation that when a situation arrives at the point where parents request that thechild be committed, relations within the household have already arrived at serious deterioration--or, in other words, children who exhibit anti-social behavior usually come from disturbed home environments. Critics also found fault with the Court's comparison of admission into a mental hospital with surgery, contending the two were very different procedures.
Related Cases

• Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923).
  
• Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925).
  
• Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).