In In re N.R., the Supreme Court today rejects a narrow definition of what constitutes a parent’s “substance abuse” that could lead to the removal of a child, but it also limits the circumstances under which substance abuse requires making the child a dependent of the court.
The court’s unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero interprets Welfare and Institutions Code section 300, subdivision (b)(1)(D), which allows making a child a dependent of the court if “[t]he child has suffered, or there is a substantial risk that the child will suffer, serious physical harm or illness” because of many things, including a parent’s inability “to provide regular care for the child due to the parent’s . . . substance abuse.”
The court first holds that a “substance abuse” finding doesn’t require “a diagnosis by a medical professional or satisfaction of the prevailing criteria for a substance use disorder as specified within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” Instead, the court gives the term “its ordinary meaning — essentially, the excessive use of drugs or alcohol.”
However, the court also concludes that parental substance abuse alone is not enough to make a child a court dependent, even for younger children. “[T]he statutory scheme does not allow courts to treat a showing of substance abuse as always being sufficient on its own to establish . . . other requirements for dependency jurisdiction,” the court says. The opinion states, “courts may not shortcut the inquiry envisioned by the Legislature by regarding substance abuse as constituting prima facie evidence of an inability to provide regular care to a young child and a substantial risk of serious physical harm to that child, and then look to the parent or guardian to rebut this presumption.”
The court reverses the Second District, Division Five, Court of Appeal’s unpublished opinion. It also disapproves a bunch of other Second District decisions: the Division One decision in In re L.C. (2019) 38 Cal.App.5th 646, the Division Eight decisions in In re Alexzander C. (2017) 18 Cal.App.5th 438 and In re K.B. (2021) 59 Cal.App.5th 593, the Division Seven decisions in In re Kadence P. (2015) 241 Cal.App.4th 1376 and In re Christopher R. (2014) 225 Cal.App.4th 1210, and the Division Three decision in In re Drake M. (2012) 211 Cal.App.4th 754. There was no petition for review in any of the disapproved cases.