Judging in a Time of COVID

• Published date: 01 October 2020
• Date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12529
• Author: Judge Randall H. Warner

JUDGING IN A TIME OF COVID

Judge Randall H. Warner

†

The pandemic of 2020 has turned much of the world upside down and courts have had to find new ways to meet obligations

to the law and the people they serve. This is especially difficult in child welfare courts, where children’s needs cannot be del-

ayed. This reflection piece addresses the challenges faced by all the dependency court participants in a COVID environment.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

Transition from traditional to virtual courts.

Impact on children when courts go virtual.

Impact on parents when courts go virtual.

Procedural justice virtually.

Keywords: COVID;Child welfare courts; Dependency courts; Judging;Judging virtually; Virtual hearings.

We in juvenile court like to think of ourselves as in the business of protecting children. You see

it in how judges, lawyers, caseworkers, and the administrative people in our court talk about their

jobs. You see it in the parking lot on bumper stickers and Arizona’s“It Shouldn’t Hurt To Be A

Child”license plates. You see it in our case filings where in 99% of cases the petitioner is called

“the Department of Child Safety.”

But that is not the only business we are in. At the same time we are protecting children, we are

also responsible for protecting the rights of parents. And while the safety of children and the rights

of their parents sometimes align in juvenile court, they often do not.

Balancing parents’rights and children’s safety has never been easy. When do you remove chil-

dren from parents? When do you return them? When are visits with a parent so emotionally harmful

to a child that you stop them? When do you terminate parental rights? When do you give parents a

second chance or a third or a fourth? Like the lawyers we are, judges who have to make these deci-

sions find solace in legal standards, but the standards do not obviate the hard decisions.

Then along came COVID-19. When the pandemic first affected our courts –in those two head-

spinning weeks in March 2020 when we went from touching elbows instead of shaking hands, to

cancelling large gatherings, to cancelling small gatherings, to practicing social distancing, to barring

unnecessary people from courthouses, to conducting court hearings by audio or video conference –

we were in survival mode. On the fly, we were trying to figure out how to protect court staff and the

public while keeping the courts open and continuing to protect the safety of children and the rights

of parents.

As of this writing, things have settled into a kind of COVID status quo. Almost all juvenile

dependency hearings in Maricopa County are being heard by audio or video, and the lawyers have

become accustomed to it. Most judges are working remotely most days, as are our staff. We have

managed to keep up with review hearings, initial hearings, pretrial conferences, and other short mat-

ters that fill up our daily calendars. We are doing some trials by audio or video conference when

†

The author is a Judge of the Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County. This article was written in May 2020.

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 58 No. 4, October 2020 965–967, doi: 10.1111/fcre.12529

© 2020 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts