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Court of Appeal:
Occasional Use of Marijuana Didn’t Justify Drug-Test Order
Opinion Says Judge Archuleta Abused Discretion at Juvenile-Dependency Dispositional Hearing
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Div. One of the Court of Appeal for this district held yesterday that a Los Angeles Superior Court judge abused her discretion in ordering that a noncustodial father of two dependent children submit to 10 random drug tests predicated on his admitted occasional smoking of marijuana.
At a May 11, 2021 dispositional hearing, Judge Debra R. Archuleta told the father, Brandon S.:
“[Y]ou can smoke pot, or you can be a dad. But it’s really hard to do both.”
In an opinion reversing the order for drug tests, Justice Gregory Weingart said:
“[E]vidence establishes only that Father occasionally used marijuana, a legal substance, and nothing more. It also bears mentioning that the evidence in the record of Father’s marijuana use occurred during a period when he did not have contact with his children.”
Weingart declared:
“Because there is no evidence that the juvenile court’s order requiring Father to take 10 drug tests was necessary to protect his children or related to the conditions that gave rise to the dependency matter, we conclude this order was an abuse of discretion.”
However, the opinion affirms Archuleta order that visit by the father be monitored. Weingart explained:
“As Father acknowledges, he is a stranger to his young children. He has been absent for nearly the entirety of B.S.’s life and for over half of then-four-year-old Bran’s life. Father argues children in dependency matters are placed frequently with people they do not know, such as foster parents, when they are taken into temporary custody. Therefore, ‘it should[ not] matter that the children did [not] know their father.’ However, children are placed with foster parents out of necessity, and it is reasonable that the juvenile court limit instances in which it places dependent children alone with persons they do not know.”
The case is In re Bran S., B313381.
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