## Facts

- A mother of eight children brought her six-year-old son to a hospital emergency room, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
- An autopsy attributed death to septicemia and peritonitis secondary to perforation of a strangulated inguinal hernia.
- After the death was reported to child welfare authorities, caseworkers visited the home.
- The mother stated that, due to her religious beliefs, she would not seek medical treatment for her remaining seven children if they became ill; she also stated the children were then healthy.
- The state sought to have the seven children adjudicated dependent based primarily on the mother’s expressed intention to refuse future medical treatment.
- No evidence showed any of the seven children were ill, injured, malnourished, abused, or presently denied needed care.

## Issues

1. Whether a parent’s religiously motivated statement that she would refuse future medical care, without evidence of current illness or imminent medical danger, is sufficient to adjudicate otherwise healthy children “dependent.”
2. Whether dependency jurisdiction may be used to impose state monitoring of children’s health based on speculative future risk.

## Decision

- The Arizona Supreme Court vacated the court of appeals decision and affirmed the juvenile court’s dismissal of the dependency petition.
- The court held the evidence was insufficient to justify state interference with the mother’s fundamental right to custody and control of her children.
- The court rejected using dependency adjudication to “monitor” healthy children absent a present or imminent medical need.

## Legal Principles

- Parental care, custody, and control of children is a fundamental interest; state interference requires a sufficient evidentiary basis tied to protection from concrete harm.
- A dependency finding requires more than speculative future risk; it must rest on conditions showing present failure (or imminent failure) to provide necessary care, including medical care when needed.
- A parent’s religiously based refusal to commit to hypothetical future medical treatment, standing alone, does not establish dependency when children are currently healthy.
- Dependency statutes do not authorize state oversight of family medical decisions merely to ensure a parent will provide medical care for any future illness.

## Conclusion

The court held that healthy children cannot be adjudicated dependent solely because a parent, for religious reasons, asserts she would refuse medical treatment in the future; absent evidence of present or imminent medical danger, the state may not invoke dependency jurisdiction to impose custodial interference or ongoing monitoring.


In re Appeal in Cochise Cnty. Juvenile Action No. 5666-J, 133 Ariz. 157, 650 P.2d 459 (Ariz. 1982)