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St. Thomas Law Review

First Page

395

Document Type

Comment

Abstract

The purpose of this Comment is to examine the inconsistency of analytical methodology that has been employed in the federal courts to determine whether the fundamental rights of minors are coextensive with those of adults in a given regulatory scheme. Specifically, the Comment focuses on this analysis in the context of juvenile curfew ordinance challenges. Further, the Comment proposes a substantive analytical methodology that implements the instruction of Supreme Court precedent in the realm of minors' constitutional rights. To achieve this purpose, the Comment necessarily investigates Supreme Court decisions analyzing the coextensive nature of a minor's fundamental rights. In some contexts, these decisions conflate the susceptibility of intrusion on parental rights with the threat of invasion on the rights of their children. Without a clear demarcation of where the parental right to raise children without state interference ends and the autonomous constitutional rights of a minor against state regulation of his conduct begins, the difficulty faced by lower courts in discerning the coextensive value of minors' rights is increased." This Comment purposefully attempts to hone in on the distinct issue of coextensive fundamental rights of minors and to separate, where possible, the influence of threats to implicated parental rights. The investigation is aimed at identifying an analogue for determining the contextual vitality of a minor's fundamental right to free movement under a juvenile curfew regime. Part II surveys Supreme Court and lower federal court decisions in the realm of minors' fundamental rights and juvenile curfews respectively, in an attempt to characterize decisional perspectives in this area of constitutional law. This survey concludes that the Supreme Court's ad hoc approach to determining the coextensive value of minors' constitutional rights is, at once, purposeful and complicating; purposeful in its advancement of a policy of flexibility and sensitivity, yet complicating in its temptation to engage in subjective decision-making. Part III examines the separate opinions in Hutchins to ascertain the core rationale of each judge's conclusion as to the coextensive value of a minor's fundamental right of free movement. The essential difference

between the plurality and concurring opinions, is the plurality's acquiescence to the temptation of subjectivity and the attempt by the concurrence to perform some objective analysis. The dissent combines a strict formalist interpretation of substantive due process inquiry with the determination of a minor's coextensive constitutional rights. This entangled methodology has no apparent authoritative basis. Part IV proposes a substantive analytical framework for determining the coextensive strength of minors' fundamental rights and applies the strategy to the juvenile curfew ordinance of the District of Columbia challenged in Hutchins. The framework is structured around a sequential and objective consideration of the factors deemed dispositive by the Supreme Court in determining whether a minor's fundamental rights can be equated with those of an adult in a given legislative scheme. The framework requires the analysis to include the consideration of custodial configuration as it is implicated in the legislative action. Applying this framework to the District of Columbia juvenile curfew ordinance a minor's fundamental right to free movement is fully coextensive and the ordinance would therefore be subject to strict scrutiny review. Finally, this Comment concludes that while Supreme Court precedent offers no fixed rule that can be easily applied to every determination of minors' coextensive constitutional rights, any examination of the issue must honor the Court's deliberate inquiry into those factors that justify the differential treatment of minors' constitutional rights. Anything short of this prescribed inquiry does not obey the Supreme Court's admonition that minors are persons under the Constitution.

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