The U.S. Supreme Court has the opportunity to revisit the scope of grandparents’ rights to stay in contact with their grandkids when the child’s parent or parents deny them access. State courts and legislatures have been struggling for years to fashion standards that comport with the uncertain legacy of the Court’s fractured plurality opinion in Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000).
If the Court agrees to review an Alabama Supreme Court decision interpreting that state’s grandparent visitation law, it could answer a key question it sidestepped in Troxel: whether grandparents are entitled to court-ordered visitation only if they can prove some compelling circumstance, such as parental unfitness or prevention of actual harm to the child. Nineteen states, including Connecticut, have answered this question in the affirmative, but 18 others have concluded that constitutional standards are met by statutes that create a presumption in favor of parents’ wishes and impose on grandparents the burden of proving that visitation is in the child’s best interest.
The Court is likely to decide sometime this month if it will take up the case.
