Colorado’s second-highest court has found a Garfield County judge was wrong to impose a $50 fine on a mother for failing to follow a court order and arrange summer tutoring for her daughter.

Judges may hold someone in contempt for disobeying an order, with two types of sanctions available. A punitive sanction, according to the procedural rules in Colorado, is meant to punish conduct that is “offensive to the authority and dignity of the court.”

A remedial sanction, on the other hand, is intended to force the person to comply with the order if they have the “present ability to perform.”

A three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals concluded there was a notable flaw with District Court Judge Anne K. Norrdin’s 2021 decision to impose a remedial sanction on Stephanie Marie Jewell. Because the sanction was for Jewell’s noncompliance with an order to provide tutoring for her daughter in the summer of 2020, there was nothing she could do to fix the problem at the time Norrdin held her in contempt.

“Mother did not have the present ability to comply with the order because she could not go back in time and arrange for (the daughter) to have tutoring in the summer of 2020,” wrote Judge John Daniel Dailey in the panel’s Nov. 17 opinion.

The evidence before Norrdin suggested Jewell’s daughter was struggling academically and that Jewell, who separated from the child’s father in 2013, was not taking the problem seriously. For the summer of 2020, Norrdin ordered the parents to arrange for tutoring if child’s school recommended it. But after the father alleged in the winter of 2020 that Jewell had neglected to follow through, Norrdin held a hearing and determined Jewell was in contempt for violating the order.

She imposed the $50 fine “to get mother’s attention that these (orders) aren’t suggestions” and also required Jewell to pay $1,332 for the father’s attorney fees stemming from the contempt proceedings.

On appeal, Jewell attempted to cast doubt on whether she failed to comply with the court order in the first place. But she also argued that it was illogical to impose a remedial sanction for an act she could only perform during the summer of 2020.

“Punitive contempt is applicable, but remedial contempt is not,” wrote her lawyer, Peter A. Rachesky.

The appellate panel agreed.

“Mother’s refusal to provide tutoring in the summer of 2020 was, therefore, a one-time violation incapable of being purged. Accordingly, remedial sanctions were not the appropriate sanctions to address mother’s past contempt,” Dailey concluded.

The case is In re the Marriage of Jewell.