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| Texas Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock |
This is probably the first time I've ever agreed with Texas Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock. There's a good chance it may never happen again. But there are data to back up his words.
Blacklock ended his State of the Judiciary Address with some remarkable comments about the new Texas laws curbing the power of the family police. And he called for limits on terminating children’s rights to their parents – a more accurate term than termination of parental rights.
You can watch what he said here.
Here’s the text of that portion of his remarks:
Using the coercive power of the State to take children
from their God-given parents—to destroy a family—should never be our first
instinct. It should ALWAYS be our very last resort. I want to thank the
Legislature for requiring DFPS to keep more families together. Senator
Kolkhorst, Representative Dutton, and others have been leaders on this, and I
urge you to continue those efforts this Session.
One suggestion is to repeal what we call subsection
(O)—it’s section 161.001(b)(1)(O) of the Family Code, and it allows a parent’s
rights to be terminated forever if the parent fails to check every box on a
long list of things the state wants them to do to get their child back. The
thing is—there’s another provision that allows termination of rights if the
parent endangers the child. So, the State only needs to use subsection (O) if
it can’t prove that the parent has endangered the child. But if the State can’t
prove that, then why on earth would we destroy that family?
Termination of parental rights is the civil death penalty. When the State goes to court to take somebody’s children, it’s not opening up a collaborative therapy session. It’s initiating adversarial litigation of the highest stakes imaginable. We need to do more to ensure that desperate parents in these cases have vigorous representation, and we need to make sure the Family Code doesn’t stack the deck against the parent before the case starts. Repealing subsection (O) would be a good start. Representative Dutton has a bill that would do this, and I commend his bill to your consideration.
As I said, his remarks are bolstered by data. As KSAT-TV reported in this story and in this one, the latest state data show that in state fiscal year 2024 child abuse deaths in Texas continued to decline. And reabuse of children left in their own homes remains lower than before the new laws were passed.
