Federal law allows an undocumented child immigrant to seek lawful permanent residence — a path to citizenship — if a state court finds, among other things, that the child cannot reunify with one or both parents due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment, and it is not in the child’s best interest to return to his or her home country. In Bianka M. v. Superior Court, the Supreme Court today makes it easier for children to get those findings in California courts. [Disclosure: Horvitz & Levy submitted an amici curiae brief in this case supporting the petitioner.]
A girl who filed an action to obtain the necessary findings lost in superior court and in the Court of Appeal because her allegedly abandoning father, who lived in Honduras, was not joined as a party to the action, even though he had actual notice of the action. The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Leondra Kruger holds the lower courts erred: “Provided that the absent parent has received adequate notice, the action may proceed even if the parent is beyond the personal jurisdiction of the court and cannot be joined as a party.” To rule otherwise, the court states, “would risk defeating Congress’s apparent aim in extending relief to immigrant children who have been abandoned by their parents.” The court also concludes that a court can make an abandonment finding even if the child’s motivation for the finding is immigration related.
The court reverses the Second District, Division Three, Court of Appeal.
