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Notes -
The state of Minnesota has passed a trans refuge bill.
From my reading of this (not a lawyer, obvs): previously if a child ran away from home, and was found, the child would be returned to the child's parents. Now, however, if a child runs away from home, and claims a "transgender identity" the state will use its powers to keep the child from its parents.
This seems: absolutely pants-shittingly insane to me? Like I'm sortof reeling from disbelief at this and am still trying to figure out what I'm missing. This also seems to imply that if a child runs away to Minnesota, that the child will be kept in Minnesota away from his or her parents.
Can anybody help me understand this? This goes so far beyond anything that I had even considered in the realm of possibility that I'm sure I must be misunderstanding this.
As a related side note: I am reaching a point where reading things on this topic is becoming incredibly difficult. There seems to be so many seemingly double/triple/quadruple entendre words that its hard to follow.
It looks like this is a custody dispute thing, not a runaway thing. I’m open to being wrong, but it looks like the law is specifying that Minnesota will not cooperate with Texas CPS removing children from their parents for putting them on hormones.
It’s unclear to me that there was much interstate CPS cooperation anyways.
FULLTEXT here: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?session=ls93&number=HF146&session_number=0&session_year=2023&version=list
This seems to suggest that the child simply has to be present in the state, with or without their parents.
And this is that section:
I don't know much about child custody law, but that section reads to me a establishing jurisdiction for the state of Minnesota to do a child custody determination. Does it necessarily follow from them having the jurisdiction to determine custody that they would refuse to return a runaway minor?
Not necessarily but it does grant them the right to decide, whereas before the parents could argue the court has no jurisdiction.
Does it grant them the right to terminate parental rights or just the ability to award custody between the two parents?
I'm not a lawyer and it remains unclear to me whether something like a petition to terminate parental rights brought by the minor, or a child in need of protective services action brought by a state agency is a subcategory of a "custody proceeding" that Minnesota now claims temporary emergency jurisdiction over, or a separate legal proceeding this law would not give them jurisdiction over. There would then need to be a second step where, refusing to give a child gender-affirming care was considered grounds for terminating rights or a CPS action in an otherwise non-abusive home.
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There's definitely a lot of explicit text that in the case of "parent X runs away with kid to Minnesota to transition, parent Y sues in other state demanding kid back", the legal process in the other state is to be ignored, and that in the case of "person breaks laws of other state by assisting transition, and flees to Minnesota" the person's not to be handed over.
How it interacts with runaways is murkier: I agree that there's nothing explicitly requiring the state to take custody, but some of those additions do apply in that case and depending on the rest of Minnesota law (of which I am ignorant) that might wind up with Minnesota failing to return the kid.
I don't think minnesota foster care is the relevant outcome- I think this is a bill that will get used by trans kids seeking emancipation. Yes, emancipation is usually a really bad idea, but it's probably a fairly common outcome of late teens alleging extreme abuse, and trans teens pattern match to the kinds of people who regularly get their emancipation requests denied.
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Hold on.
So if a kid is abandoned or abused by both parents, it doesn't give the state the authority to remove custody from both of them?
In that situation, if the child is in Minnesota, "the child is present in the state and [...] it is necessary in an emergency to protect the child because the child [...] is subjected to [...] abuse", so there's temporary emergency jurisdiction.
If the child is not present in the state, then there wouldn't be temporary emergency jurisdiction, but that's correct in a bunch of cases (e.g. preventing a family, none of whom live in Minnesota, from asking Minnesota courts to intervene in its custody dispute).
The way I understood his argument is: It's not true that Minnesota courts will be able to take away kids from the parents when both of them are against transition, because this is merely about jurisdiction over cases where the parents are fighting over custody.
My argument is that giving them jurisdiction is enough to give the state the ability to take the kid from both the parents, the same way it would be if the kid was abused by both parents, and the kid ran away to Minnesota.
I wasn't sure what you meant with your previous post and wanted to err on the side of issuing unnecessary clarifications rather than nonissuing necessary ones.
Sorry for wasting your time.
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So a carbon copy of California’s trans sanctuary law, then.
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