Supreme Court won't review Louisiana law on grandparents' rights
Justices declined without comment to review an appeal from a former oil-rig worker left to raise a 1-year-old daughter after his wife died of a brain tumor. Jeffrey Alan Harris had argued that his late wife's family was trying to be a parent to his child.
Last year, justices struck down a Washington state visitation law and warned that states must be careful in giving grandparents and others with close ties to children the right to see them regularly against a parent's wishes.
That ruling gave America's estimated 60 million grandparents no special status in visitation cases. But at the same time, it did not definitively answer such questions as what standard judges should use in protecting the rights of parents.
The emotional subject pits parental rights against states' efforts to promote children's best interests.
Under the Louisiana law, if a spouse dies or is imprisoned, that spouse's parents may be given reasonable visitation if a judge decides it is in the grandchildren's best interest. A Louisiana appeals court said the law was not too far-reaching.
In asking the justices to reconsider the issue, Harris' attorney argued that "a fit parent like Jeffrey should not be compelled into court by the state to, in effect, be 'married' to his in-laws."
The attorney for the grandparents, Gaston and Pat Galjour, told the justices, "This statute cannot be read or stretched in any way to be interpreted as granting unto grandparents the same rights and status as parents."
Trisha Galjour Harris sued to end her two-year marriage in 1997, just weeks before her death. Among her complaints was her husband's drinking, court records show.
In the Washington state case, the Supreme Court ruled against the parents of a man who had committed suicide. The couple had been given visitation rights to see their son's two daughters, over objections of the girls' mother.
In other cases, the justices:
• Ordered that former President Clinton's name be removed from the roster of lawyers approved for practice at the high court. Clinton had asked to resign from the Supreme Court bar, rather than fight suspension or disbarment related to the Paula Jones sexual-harassment investigation.
• Ruled that victims of identity theft or other credit fraud cannot stretch a two-year deadline to sue companies that collect or spread bad information, even if the victims don't learn of the problem until it is too late.