A Houston-area father’s extensive criminal history is grounds to terminate his parental rights even though he didn’t directly harm the child, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The ruling likely sets a precedent for similar Child Protective Services cases involving a parent with a criminal history.
The unidentified Brazoria County father was incarcerated when his son — referred to in court documents as N.L.S. — was born in 2015 and has been for much of the child’s life, but the father hasn’t been accused of directly hurting him.
Still, the high court ruled, the father’s behavior and absence in his son’s life has repeatedly endangered N.L.S. and poses a substantial risk of harm.
“There is no evidence that Father took any measures to contact N.L.S. before the Department initiated these proceedings or to be part of decisions regarding N.L.S.’s well-being while incarcerated,” justices wrote.
But the high court still wants a lower appeals court to consider whether terminating the father’s rights is actually in his son’s best interest.
KERA News reached out to the father’s attorney and the Brazoria County District Attorney’s Office, representing the state, for comment.
The ruling comes just over a month after the Texas Supreme Court ruled terminating a parent's rights to their children requires a high burden of proof. That's the bar DFPS must again clear in Houston's First Court of Appeals to prove whether the father's parental rights should be terminated.
In 2021, police in Holiday Lakes, south of Houston, removed then 5-year-old N.L.S. and his brother from his mom’s house after N.L.S. had reportedly gone to a neighbor’s home hungry and wearing the same dirty clothes several mornings in a row.
The unidentified father of N.L.S. has been convicted of 12 offenses since 2008, including two family violence charges not involving N.L.S. or the child’s mother, whose identity is also private in court documents. One of his drug convictions stems from an arrest for meth possession the same day he visited N.L.S. at his mother’s home.
The father initially testified at trial that the child’s mother wasn’t a good parent, that she was never home and that he was the one taking care of N.L.S. when he and the mom were together.
He later denied making those statements and said the mother was an attentive parent with a clean home, and he had no concerns that N.L.S. had been neglected.
DFPS didn’t require the father to complete any services. He said he worked as a welder for the sheriff’s department, was working through parenting papers DFPS provided, planned to attend narcotics anonymous classes in prison and had requested but never got video visits with N.L.S. A CPS caseworker denied that the father asked for video visits.
Court documents say the father didn’t know his son’s grade in school, favorite subject, favorite color or favorite food. He also said at the time he couldn’t provide N.L.S. with a safe and stable home, according to DFPS.
The trial court terminated his parental rights. The court of appeals later ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to connect the father’s criminal conduct to any alleged endangerment of N.L.S. — a ruling the justices reversed Friday.
A court can terminate someone’s parental rights when the parent has endangered a child’s physical or emotional well-being or knowingly placed them with someone who did, according to the Texas Family Code.
The Texas Supreme Court has previously ruled that using illicit drugs in a way that threatens a child’s health or safety falls under the legal definition of endangerment. It doesn’t matter whether the drug use directly harmed the child, just that the parent’s behavior shows a pattern of “substantial risk of harm.”
That’s not just limited to drug use cases, justices wrote. Merely being in prison doesn’t constitute endangerment, but a pattern of “increasingly serious” crimes like the father’s in this case — even those that happened before the child was born — are endangering.
“Father’s criminal conduct has prevented him from seeing N.L.S. since he was three years old, endangering N.L.S.’s physical and emotional well-being,” justices wrote.
The court's ruling now means there doesn't need to be a causal link between a parent's behavior and endangerment to their child for parental rights to be terminated. But Chanté Brantley, law professor and director of the VanSickle Family Law Clinic at Southern Methodist University, said it's unclear what type of behavior courts will consider too risky for a child under this case law.
"It seems to me it's potentially a lot of things parents do that may not directly cause harm to a child but could be endangering," said Brantley, who's not involved with the N.L.S. case.
Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock, who’s been outspoken about his aversion to terminating parental rights, wrote a two-page dissenting opinion. Justices Devine and Sullivan agreed.
“There are many, too many, problems with our child welfare system,” Blacklock wrote, quoting his previous dissenting opinion in a similar parental rights case. “An overabundance of successful appeals by parents whose rights have been terminated is not among those problems. Leaving the court of appeals’ judgement alone would not have left this child uncared for, and it would not have prevented the government from continuing to monitor his welfare.”
Got a tip? Email Toluwani Osibamowo at tosibamowo@kera.org. You can follow Toluwani on X @tosibamowo.
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