Declining “to adopt an approach that would automatically place an incorrigible child in the delinquency system pipeline,” the Supreme Court today holds in In re R.T. that a statute allowing a court to exercise dependency jurisdiction over a child at risk because of “the failure or inability of his or her parent or guardian to adequately supervise or protect the child” can apply even if the parent was not to blame for the lack of supervision or protection.  The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Ming Chin comes in the case of a teenager whose mother and grandparents were unable to control her, despite what the court says were the mother’s “concerted (and at times desperate) efforts to protect and discipline” her daughter.  The court finds that the history of a 1987 bill “makes clear that the Legislature did not intend to impose a parental fault requirement.”

Justice Goodwin Liu signs the court’s opinion, but also writes separately.  He notes that “simply being found ‘inadequate’ as a parent, even when the parent is not at fault, can carry a painful stigma,” and he suggests “[t]he Legislature may wish to revisit this issue and, if appropriate, amend the statute in a manner that clarifies the proper balance of competing values in difficult cases like this one.”

Resolving a split of authority, the court affirms the Second District, Division Two, Court of Appeal, and disapproves a 2010 opinion by the Second District, Division One.  It is also critical of language in a 1991 opinion by the First District, Division Two.