Arapahoe Cnty. Dep't of Human Servs. v. People Ex Rel. D.Z.B. ( 2019 )

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ADVANCE SHEET HEADNOTE
January 14, 2019
2019 CO 4
No. 17SC250, People in Interest of D.Z.B.—Standing on Appeal.
The supreme court reviews whether the court of appeals erred in concluding that
the Arapahoe County Department of Human Services (the Department) lacked standing
to challenge a district court’s temporary custody order placing D.Z.B., a juvenile, in one
of its residential facilities pending his delinquency adjudication.
The supreme court concludes that the court of appeals erroneously merged the
analysis used to determine whether a plaintiff has standing to sue with the analysis used
to determine whether a non-party has standing to appeal to assess whether the
Department, a non-party to the district court proceedings, had standing to appeal. As a
result, the division required the Department to demonstrate that it (1) suffered an injury
in fact to a legally protected interest and (2) was substantially aggrieved by the district
court’s order. Because the Department was a non-party to the lower court proceedings,
the court of appeals should have assessed only whether the Department was substantially
aggrieved by the district court’s order. Accordingly, the supreme court reverses and
remands to the court of appeals to apply the correct standard and to consider any
outstanding issues.
The Supreme Court of the State of Colorado
2 East 14th Avenue • Denver, Colorado 80203
2019 CO 4
Supreme Court Case No. 17SC250
Certiorari to the Colorado Court of Appeals
Court of Appeals Case No. 14CA2167
Petitioner:
Arapahoe County Department of Human Services,
v.
The People of the State of Colorado
In the Interest of
Respondent:
D.Z.B., Juvenile.
Judgment Reversed
en banc
January 14, 2019
Attorneys for Petitioner:
Ronald Carl, Arapahoe County Attorney
Michael Valentine, Deputy County Attorney
Danielle Newman, Assistant County Attorney
Aurora, Colorado
Attorneys for Respondent:
Megan Ring, Public Defender
Ryann S. Hardman, Deputy Public Defender
Denver, Colorado
Attorneys for Amicus Curiae Colorado Counties, Inc.:
Hall & Evans, LLC
Thomas J. Lyons
Paul R. Janda
Denver, Colorado
Attorneys for Amicus Curiae the Colorado Department of Human Services:
Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General
Tanya E. Wheeler, First Assistant Attorney General
Sarah Richelson, Assistant Attorney General
Denver, Colorado
JUSTICE HART delivered the Opinion of the Court.
¶1 In 2014, the Arapahoe County Department of Human Services (the Department)
was ordered by the district court to take custody of D.Z.B. and house him in a particular
facility pending his delinquency adjudication. Believing that the court order imposed a
duty on it that was in violation of statutory requirements, the Department appealed that
order. The court of appeals dismissed the appeal, concluding that the Department, as a
non-party to the delinquency proceedings, lacked standing to appeal the order. In
reaching that conclusion, the division conflated the test to evaluate whether a plaintiff
has standing to bring a lawsuit with the test to determine whether a non-party has
standing to appeal a decision of a lower court. Accordingly, we reverse and remand for
the division to apply the correct standing analysis and to consider any other remaining
arguments.
I. Facts and Procedural History
¶2 D.Z.B., a habitual juvenile offender, was on probation when he was charged with
additional delinquent acts. The prosecution sought to revoke or modify his probation.
D.Z.B.’s counsel requested that the petitioner, the Department, investigate treatment and
confinement options for D.Z.B. At the pretrial hearing, the guardian ad litem and D.Z.B.’s
counsel requested that D.Z.B. be placed in one of the Department’s residential facilities,
Jefferson Hills, both prior to adjudication and as a sentence if he were adjudicated
delinquent.
¶3 The Department objected to D.Z.B. being placed in Jefferson Hills in lieu of bond
before the adjudication. The Department contended that under section 19-2-114(1)(a),
C.R.S. (2018), and state regulations governing out-of-home placements for at-risk
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children, the district court could not place D.Z.B. in one of the Department’s residential
child-care facilities without its consent until after a delinquency adjudication. See Dep’t
of Human Servs. Reg. 500, 12 Colo. Code Regs. 2509-4: 7.304.3 (2018) (establishing criteria
for out-of-home placement, including a finding of imminent risk, which can be
established by a delinquency adjudication). The district court disagreed and issued a
temporary custody order requiring that the Department place D.Z.B. in Jefferson Hills
pending his delinquency adjudication.
¶4 The Department appealed the temporary custody order. In its decision, the court
of appeals began by noting that D.Z.B.’s counsel had raised several threshold concerns
about the appeal, including the lack of a sufficient record, the absence of a final
appealable order, and the Department’s alleged lack of standing. People in Interest of
D.Z.B., 2017 COA 17, ¶ 16, __ P.3d __. Because it concluded that the Department did not
have standing to challenge the order, the court of appeals declined to address the other
issues raised by D.Z.B.’s counsel. Id. at ¶ 17.
¶5 In analyzing the Department’s standing, the division first inquired whether the
Department had suffered an injury in fact to a legally protected interest or had been
conferred standing under the Colorado Children’s Code. Id. at ¶¶ 33–44. To these
questions, the division answered no. Id. at ¶¶ 36, 44. The division then considered
whether the Department had been substantially aggrieved by the district court’s order
and found that, because the order did not place an “onerous or unique burden” on the
Department, there was no substantial grievance. Id. at ¶ 52. The Department now asks
us to reverse the court of appeals’ decision, arguing that the division departed from our
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longstanding precedent requiring a non-party to show only that it was substantially
aggrieved by a lower court’s order to have standing to appeal.
¶6 We granted certiorari. 1
II. Analysis
¶7 Standing to bring a lawsuit in the first instance is distinct from standing to appeal
a lower court’s decision. To establish standing to sue, plaintiffs must demonstrate that
(1) they suffered an injury in fact and (2) the injury was to a legally protected interest.
Hickenlooper v. Freedom from Religion Found., Inc., 2014 CO 77, ¶ 8, 338 P.3d 1002, 1006;
Barber v. Ritter, 196 P.3d 238, 245 (Colo. 2008). Any losing person or entity may appeal a
lower court’s decision if she was a party to the action in that court. Colo. Permanente Med.
Grp., P.C. v. Evans, 926 P.2d 1218, 1223 (Colo. 1996) (citing Miller v. Clark, 356 P.2d 965,
966 (Colo. 1960)). There is no independent requirement that a party to a proceeding
establish standing to appeal.
¶8 In contrast, an individual or entity who was not a party to a lower court
proceeding must demonstrate standing to appeal that decision. Unlike standing to sue,
standing to appeal does not require that a non-party demonstrate an injury to a legally
protected interest independent of the decision being appealed. “The most obvious
1 We granted certiorari to review the following issue:
Whether the court of appeals erred in concluding that petitioner does not
have standing to appeal a juvenile court’s decision concerning
pre-adjudication placement in a delinquency case.
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difference between standing to appeal and standing to bring suit is that the focus shifts
to injury caused by the judgment rather than injury caused by the underlying facts.” 15A
Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & Edward H. Cooper, Federal Practice and
Procedure: Jurisdiction § 3902, at 63 (2d ed. 1992). Thus, a non-party may appeal a lower
court’s decision if the party has been injured by the disposition of the case. Evans, 926
P.2d at 1223; see Bush v. Winker, 907 P.2d 79, 81 (Colo. 1995) (concluding that a non-party
has standing to appeal a trial court’s final judgment if it was substantially aggrieved by
the order). Of course, not every adverse impact a court order or judgment has on a
non-party constitutes an injury sufficient to support standing to appeal. To establish
standing to appeal, a non-party must show that a trial court’s order imposes a
“substantial grievance” on that non-party. A substantial grievance exists when the lower
court’s decision denies a non-party some claim of right or imposes upon it a substantial
burden or obligation. City & Cty. of Broomfield v. Farmers Reservoir & Irrigation Co., 235
P.3d 296, 302 (Colo. 2010).
¶9 In determining whether the Department had standing to appeal the
pre-adjudication placement of D.Z.B. at Jefferson Hills, the court of appeals appears to
have merged these two standing analyses. In the resulting hybrid analysis, the court first
asked whether the Department had demonstrated that “it suffered an injury in fact . . . to
a legally protected interest.” D.Z.B., ¶ 21. The division then stated that non-parties, like
the Department, must also allege that they were “substantially aggrieved by the
disposition of the case in the trial court” to establish standing. Id. at ¶ 26. The only
question relevant to the Department’s standing to appeal the lower court’s decision,
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however, is the latter question—namely, whether the Department was “substantially
aggrieved” by the temporary custody order. See Evans, 926 P.2d at 1223 (“[T]o maintain
an appeal an individual or entity must ‘either be a party to the action or . . . must be a
person substantially aggrieved by the disposition of the case in the lower court.’”)
(internal citations omitted); see also People in Interest of C.A.G., 903 P.2d 1229, 1233 (Colo.
App. 1995) (holding that a non-party who was substantially aggrieved by the disposition
of the case in the trial court has standing to appeal).
¶10 The People rely heavily on our opinion in C.W.B., Jr. v. A.S., 2018 CO 8, 410 P.3d
438, for the proposition that a non-party seeking to appeal a trial court determination
must show both that it suffered an injury in fact to a legally protected interest and that it
was substantially aggrieved by a trial court decision. However, C.W.B. raised a very
different question from that presented here. In C.W.B., we were asked to consider
whether foster parents who had been given a statutory right to intervene as a party in a
trial court dependency and neglect proceeding thereby obtained automatic standing to
appeal a juvenile court’s ruling denying the termination of parental rights. Id. at ¶ 20,
410 P.3d at 443. The foster parents in C.W.B. were not non-parties to the termination
proceedings; they had been granted a statutory right to intervene. The question we
confronted was whether the right to intervene in the termination proceedings gave them
a legally protected interest that they were entitled to pursue on appeal. We explained
that the statutorily granted right to participate in a termination hearing as intervenors
did not entitle foster parents to appeal a decision not to terminate where neither the State
nor the guardian ad litem chose to do so. Id. at ¶ 28, 410 P.3d at 445.
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¶11 Our focus in C.W.B., while contextually unique, was consistent with the
appropriate inquiry to determine standing when a non-party seeks to appeal a trial court
decision. The foster parents in C.W.B. had been given a statutory right to participate as a
party in the termination proceedings, and they did participate in those proceedings. Id.
at ¶ 1, 410 P.3d at 440. But they did not have a legal interest in a particular outcome to
those proceedings. For that reason, they were not “aggrieved” by the decision of the trial
court. The statutory right to intervene at issue in C.W.B. distinguishes that case from the
traditional dispute over non-party standing to appeal. The inquiry, however, is much the
same: Did the decision of the trial court “substantially aggrieve” the non-party in the
sense that it denied that non-party a claim of right or imposed upon it a substantial
burden or obligation? See Evans, 926 P.2d at 1223; C.A.G., 903 P.2d at 1233.
¶12 We have not previously elaborated on what a non-party must demonstrate to
show a “substantial burden.” The inquiry will necessarily be fact-specific. The court of
appeals concluded that the burden imposed on the Department by the district court’s
order did not rise to the level of a “substantial grievance” because it did not impose a
“unique or onerous” burden on the Department. D.Z.B., ¶ 52. But we have never held
that a burden must be “unique or onerous” to confer standing on a non-party to appeal
a district court’s decision. And where a final court order requires a non-party agency to
act in a manner that the agency believes is prohibited by law, that order imposes a
substantial burden on the agency. In that instance, the agency must choose between
conflicting commands of two co-equal branches of government. An agency in that bind
has standing to appeal the trial court’s order.
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¶13 We therefore reverse the division’s decision and remand this case for application
of the correct standing analysis and consideration of the remaining threshold issues
raised by D.Z.B.’s counsel.
III. Conclusion
¶14 In concluding that the Department lacked standing to appeal the district court’s
order, the court of appeals erroneously merged the two-prong legal injury test to
determine whether a party has standing to sue with the substantially aggrieved test used
to determine whether a non-party has standing to appeal. Accordingly, we reverse and
remand to the court of appeals to apply the correct standard and to consider any
remaining issues.
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