Massachusetts Department of Children and Families v. Mother

Court: Supreme Judicial Court for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 

Date Filed: Dec. 16, 2024

Background: During a Juvenile Court proceeding in 2019, Adam Montgomery was granted custody of his four-year-old daughter, Harmony. Later that year, Harmony disappeared, but her disappearance went undetected and unreported until 2021. One year later, Harmony’s father was arrested and convicted of her murder.

Harmony’s case drew widespread media attention and raised serious questions about the involvement of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families and the Juvenile Court in Harmony’s life and her tragic death. In 2022, the Commonwealth’s Office of the Child Advocate released a report identifying, among other things, numerous oversights and missed opportunities by child welfare agencies in two states, including DCF, as well as decisions by the Juvenile Court, that failed to protect Harmony from abuse and allowed her death to go undetected for years.

While Massachusetts law provides for confidentiality in sensitive Juvenile Court proceedings involving children, the legislature tempered that secrecy by providing for disclosure where “good cause” warrants lifting the veil on impounded documents. Documentary filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein, through his production company, LCMedia Productions, Inc., filed a motion to access the audio and transcript of the 2019 care and protection proceeding in Harmony’s case for a forthcoming documentary film about the child protection, foster care, and juvenile court systems in and outside Massachusetts. 

The Essex Juvenile Court denied the motion. LCMedia then appealed the lower court’s decision to the Massachusetts Court of Appeals, but before that court could hear the case, the Supreme Judicial Court moved the case onto its docket, soliciting friend-of-the-court brief submissions in so doing.

Our Position: In a friend-of-the-court brief joined by nine news and media organizations, the Reporters Committee urged the Supreme Judicial Court to reverse the lower court’s decision, arguing that its interpretation of the relevant statutory provisions, if left undisturbed, would severely and unduly limit the press’s ability to report on matters of the utmost public concern relating to child safety and welfare.

• There is “good cause” for access to the Juvenile Court records at issue.

• Journalists and media organizations can be interested nonparties for purposes of establishing good cause for access.

• The public has a particularly powerful interest in access in this case.

• The public interest in transparency in this case far outweighs any privacy interests.

• Other jurisdictions permit disclosure of records in juvenile court cases concerning children who have died.

From the Brief: “The lower court’s rigid adherence to impoundment in this case — despite the statute’s express recognition of good cause as a basis for disclosure — effectively locks all care and protection proceedings in a permanent black box of secrecy, to the detriment of those within the child welfare system and the public who would seek to ensure that system is functioning effectively.”