In Re Jerald C.
BROUSSARD, J.
The father of Jerald C., a minor, appeals from an order requiring reimbursement to the County of Santa Clara for the costs of the care and support of Jerald while in custody.
Jerald was declared a ward of the court pursuant to
(1a) Statutes requiring responsible relatives to reimburse governmental agencies for support have been sustained against claims of denial of equal protection. In Swoap v. Superior Court (1973) 10 Cal.3d 490 [111 Cal. Rptr. 136, 516 P.2d 840], this court upheld statutes requiring responsible adult children to support needy or poor elderly parents and providing that the children must reimburse the state for support provided by it to the parents. Pointing out that a long tradition of law and a measureless history of societal custom had established the duty of adult children to support their poor parents, the court concluded that the duty imposed by the statutes bears a rational relationship to the accomplishment of the state purpose of relieving the public treasury and that the statutes do not arbitrarily charge one class of society for the cost of public assistance. (10 Cal.3d at pp. 502-507.)
In re Ricky H. (1970) 2 Cal.3d 513 [86 Cal. Rptr. 76, 468 P.2d 204] upheld a statute requiring parents to reimburse the state for the costs of counsel in juvenile proceedings. Pointing out that legal assistance essential to protect and preserve the minor‘s constitutional rights comes within the parental support obligation, the court concluded that imposition of parental liability for counsel fees cannot be characterized as arbitrary or a denial of equal protection. (2 Cal.3d at p. 518 et seq.)
Similarly, medical treatment of a minor‘s physical injuries and care of a mentally retarded minor come within the parent‘s support obligation, and statutes providing for parental liability to reimburse governmental agencies providing such treatment and care have been upheld against claims of denial of equal protection. (In re Dudley (1966) 239 Cal. App.2d 401, 404 et seq. [48 Cal. Rptr. 790]; County of Alameda v. Kaiser (1965) 238 Cal. App.2d 815, 817-818 [48 Cal. Rptr. 790].)
(2) “A statute obviously violates the equal protection clause if it selects one particular class of persons for a species of taxation and no rational basis supports such classification. [Citations.] Such a concept for the state‘s taking of a free man‘s property manifestly denies him equal protection of the law.” (Dept. of Mental Hygiene v. Kirchner (1964) 60 Cal.2d 716, 722-723 [36 Cal. Rptr. 488, 388 P.2d 720, 20 A.L.R.3d 353] [remanded 380 U.S. 194 (13 L.Ed.2d 753, 85 S.Ct. 87); subsequent opn. 62 Cal.2d 586 (43 Cal. Rptr. 329, 400 P.2d 321, 20 A.L.R.3d 361)]; see Myles Salt Co. v. Board of Com. (1916) 239 U.S. 478, 484-485 [60 L.Ed. 392, 396, 36 S.Ct. 204]; Norwood v. Baker (1898) 172 U.S. 269, 279 et seq. [43 L.Ed. 443, 447, 19 S.Ct. 187]; Furey v. City of Sacramento (1979) 24 Cal.3d 862, 874-875 [157 Cal. Rptr. 684, 598 P.2d 844]; Dawson v. Town of Los Altos Hills (1976) 16 Cal.3d 676, 684 [129 Cal. Rptr. 97, 547 P.2d 1377].) Such limitation on the government‘s ability to raise money has been traced to the Magna Carta and the Petition of Right. (See tenBroek, California‘s Dual System of Family Law: Its Origin, Development, and Present Status, Part III (1965) 17 Stan.L.Rev. 614, 643.) (1b) To charge the cost of operation of state functions conducted for public benefit to one class of society is arbitrary and violates the basic constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the law. (Id., at p. 639.)
(3) In accordance with this fundamental principle, it has been recognized that parents may not be charged for costs when adult children are incarcerated in prison or committed to state hospitals for the dangerous. Nor may adult children be charged for such incarceration or commitment of their parents. The cases have reasoned that when incarceration or commitment is for the protection of society, it is arbitrary to assess relatives for the expense. (Dept. of Mental Hygiene v. Kirchner, supra, 60 Cal.2d 716, 719-720; Department of Mental Hygiene v. Hawley (1963) 59 Cal.2d 247, 251 et seq. [28 Cal. Rptr. 718, 379 P.2d 22]; Department of Mental Hygiene v. Bank of America (1970) 3 Cal. App.3d 949, 950 et seq. [83 Cal. Rptr. 559].)
In Kirchner the court explained: “Recently in Department of Mental Hygiene v. Hawley (1963) 59 Cal.2d 247 [28 Cal. Rptr. 718, 379 P.2d 22], the department, relying upon this same section 6650, attempted to collect from a father for the cost of care, support and maintenance in a state hospital for the mentally ill or insane of his son who had been charged with crime, but before trial of the criminal issue (and obviously without adjudication of that issue) had been found by the court to be insane and committed to such
(5a) Whatever the basis for other commitments by the juvenile court (see
The basis of commitment under
The purpose of juvenile commitment proceedings “to protect the public from criminal conduct by minors” (
While it is true that
The county seeks to distinguish Kirchner and Hawley on the ground that the obligation to support a minor child is a common law obligation whereas the obligation to support an adult child or parent is a statutory obligation. However, the duty to reimburse for support and maintenance imposed by
In seeking reimbursement of expenses incurred in
Moreover, common law and statutory origin furnish no basis for the urged distinction because the statutory duty to provide support for needy parents and adult children has existed for so long. As pointed out in Swoap v. Superior Court, supra, 10 Cal.3d 490, it “is abundantly clear that children have generally been subject to a duty to support poor parents for a very long time, indeed. It is true, as stated in Kirchner and Boss, that there was no such duty at common law. Nevertheless, the duty is deep rooted and of venerable ancestry; it can be traced back over almost four centuries to the year 1601, when it emerged as part and parcel of the Elizabethan Poor Law. (43 Eliz. 1, ch. 2, § vi (1601).)11 Professor tenBroek has clearly demonstrated that `legal liability of relatives [imposed by the Elizabethan Poor Law] was designed to indemnify the public and to minimize its costs in relieving the poor.’ (tenBroek, supra, 16 Stan.L.Rev. 257, 283.)
(6) “This duty, codified in California in 1872 as
(5b) As in Swoap, the long tradition of law and history of societal custom of a duty to support poor adult children and parents must be deemed the substantial equivalent of the common law duty to support minor children. The duties may not be distinguished in terms of the state‘s right to reimbursement. On the one hand the state, in accordance with Swoap, may obtain reimbursement for support allowances paid to or for minors. On the other hand the common law duty to support minor children does not authorize the state to recover the costs of confinement imposed for the protection of society and the minor and his rehabilitation. Under Kirchner those costs may not be recovered when an adult is confined for the protection of society, and they may not be recovered when minors are placed in custody for the protection of society.
It is urged that while the county may not recover the costs of confinement and treatment, it should be permitted to recover costs incurred in supporting and maintaining the juvenile based on the parental common law duty and cases upholding responsible relative statutes in other situations. Even assuming that it is economically feasible to segregate the types of costs borne by the institutions and to allocate in a reasonable manner a portion of the costs to each juvenile, we must reject the proposed allocation for the following reasons. The allocation would be equally possible in the Kirchner and Hawley situations, but neither case permitted the allocation, and the allocation would involve partial repudiation of well-settled principles of law. As pointed out above, the
Our conclusion that the county may not recover its costs does not mean that parents will be unjustly enriched. One of the greatest misfortunes a parent may suffer is the incarceration of offspring for crime. To imply that the avoidance of support obligation balances or exceeds such misfortune would betray a misguided sense of values. Incarcerating the child, the state
Rejecting equal protection challenges, three Court of Appeal decisions have upheld the right of the county to obtain reimbursement from the parents of a minor committed under
The order appealed from is reversed.
Bird, C.J., and Mosk, J., concurred.
KAUS, J., Concurring.
This litigation has been pending far too long. Since the fault is chiefly, if not exclusively, mine, I shall try to help us close the book on this case by being brief.
When the court filed its first opinion, I felt that it painted with too broad a brush. I said so in a concurring and dissenting opinion in which I was joined by Justice Reynoso. I still feel the same way. My basic theory is this: it is undeniable that equal protection principles do not permit us to saddle a tiny segment of the public with the cost of protecting society from persons who, for one reason or another, must be confined in institutions. Yet if such a person has someone who is legally responsible for supporting him with the necessaries of life — food, clothing, shelter — I see no reason why the state cannot charge the responsible party for whatever he saves by not having to support the person “on the outside.” The plurality suggests that such a scheme “would betray a misguided sense of values.” Perhaps
It was my original belief that we already had such legislation on the books and that all we had to do was to remand these proceedings to the trial court to determine whether the county was attempting to charge Jerald‘s father for costs which exceeded the reasonable value of his parental obligation — in other words, whether the father was being charged for the cost of incarceration. I have, however, concluded that the problem is far more complicated — substantively and administratively — and that the applicable statutory scheme does not lend itself to an efficient segregation between those costs which may legitimately be charged to the parent and those which are the responsibility of the general public. I will briefly explain some of the reasons which caused me to change my mind.
To begin with, it now seems clear to me that isolating and disallowing the cost of security would not, in itself, cure all the constitutional problems in this area. The cost of supporting a minor in a county institution may, in dollars and cents, often exceed the preexisting support obligation of a particular parent. It is sad but true that from a purely material point of view, for many minors confinement in juvenile hall is a step up. As noted above, my understanding of what equal protection principles — as set forth in Dept. of Mental Hygiene v. Kirchner (1964) 60 Cal.2d 716 [36 Cal. Rptr. 488, 388 P.2d 720, 20 A.L.R.3d 353] — allow and what they forbid, leads to the inevitable conclusion that a parent cannot be compelled to foot the bill for a minor‘s improvement in living standards, when such improvement is triggered by the need to detain the minor for the public good. Therefore, any system of exacting from a parent part of the cost of maintaining a minor in a public institution must be capable of taking into account at least the approximate level of that parent‘s support obligation. The statutes in force at the time the order before us was entered are inefficient tools for such fine tuning.
In these statutes, the Legislature had devised a straightforward statutory scheme under which each county legislatively determined the total cost of confining the minor (
Nor would all this litigating bring much light into this dark corner of the law. Judicial horizons are necessarily limited by the factual and legal issues which parties choose to frame. The Legislature, on the other hand, has a bird‘s eye view of the entire problem and could do much to simplify collections while maintaining constitutional standards. First, having in mind the diverse expenses that are actually incurred by the counties and the state in juvenile institutions, it can — subject to Kirchner standards — decide which of these expenses should appropriately be charged to parents. Second, considering the need for careful segregation of program costs, the Legislature may want to establish guidelines, so that all counties will make comparable charges for comparable services. Third — and most vitally — because the amount that a parent may be charged will necessarily vary with the parent‘s circumstances during the minor‘s confinement, the Legislature may well find that efficiency and fairness demand the establishment of a schedule of graduated fees, tailored as near as may be to the particular parent‘s support
In sum, although I believe that the state may constitutionally require responsible parents to pay a part of the cost of maintaining a minor in a county institution, I conclude that we should not attempt to bend the statutory framework applicable to this case into constitutional shape, but rather should leave the Legislature to address several practical questions in light of the constitutional principles discussed.5
Accordingly, I concur in the judgment.
Reynoso, J., Grodin, J., and Richardson, J.,* concurred.