Media Access to Courts Involving Minors Sparks Debate in Los Angeles

This March, Los Angeles’ dependency courts -- where rulings are made whether children remain in foster homes or return to their parents’ or previous legal guardians’ custody -- opened to the media for the first time since the 1960s. After an attempt to open the state’s children’s courts failed in a state Assembly committee in 2010, Supervising Judge Michael Nash ordered that the dependency courts of Los Angeles County be open to the media last month. A number of organizations, including the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles (CLCA) and the Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers (LADL) have publicly criticized the decision. Supervising CLCLA Executive Director Leslie Starr Heimov said that the decision to allow press in courtrooms places an additional burden on the county’s publicly appointed attorneys, who sometimes work as many as 150 cases simultaneously. “What we’re asking for is an orderly procedure where we get more than three seconds to make our case,” Heimov told the Pasadena-Star News.