Before the Court en banc. Opinion by Justice Douglas.
In this appeal, the court examined the question of whether the statutory requirements for reunification with a child after removal from the home for neglect are required to be fulfilled by the non-offending parent. A child was removed from her mother by Social Services. At the time, the mother and father were separated. Social Services subsequently petitioned for a hearing to determine if the child was in need of protection. The mother signed a stipulation of the allegations against her and willingly relinquished custody, but as to the father, the stipulation only noted a temporary protective order against him, not any neglectful behavior. The father reached a stipulation to dismiss the petition for a hearing against him, but Social Services filed a case plan providing for him to submit to drug screenings. He did not sign the case plan. After several dependency proceedings, Social Services moved to terminate the parental rights of the father because he had not complied with his case plan, which Social Services argued triggered the statutory presumptions of NRS 128.109 in favor of terminating parental rights. The district court denied the petition, stating that these legal presumptions did not apply to the father. On appeal, Social Services argued that the initial removal of the child gave Social Services the jurisdiction to place the child with a suitable parent, and that the father was not a suitable parent. The court held that applying the statutory presumptions in favor of terminating parental rights to the father without having maintained a petition against the father for neglect would be a denial of due process. Because the father’s behavior was not the cause of the removal of the child from parental custody in the first place, he could not be compelled to comply with a case plan for reunification, and Social Services otherwise failed to demonstrate that termination of his parental rights was warranted. Affirmed. (Mark Dunagan, Associate in the Reno office of McDonald Carano Wilson.)
