Colorado’s second-highest court squeezed through an opening last week in a controversial state Supreme Court decision from 2025, concluding that the justices had not prohibited a child’s legal representative from being the one to request termination of parental rights in child welfare cases.

Whether the government alone is empowered to pursue child neglect cases became a high-profile issue in the past year after the Supreme Court addressed what should happen if a county moves to dismiss the neglect allegations against a parent.

In People in the Interest of R.M.P., the Supreme Court concluded that judges could not allow a child’s legal representative to continue the case without the county. Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez wrote that the government alone is authorized to pursue child welfare cases, and permitting individual parties to litigate cases would result in a “weaponized family court system.”

“Allowing a child (or any non-state party) to override the State’s determination that a petition should be dismissed would be analogous to allowing the victim of a crime to prevent the district attorney from dismissing a criminal case,” she wrote. “Colorado law does not confer such a right.”

Justice Richard L. Gabriel was the lone dissenter, arguing that the question was whether the government may “unilaterally” dismiss a child welfare case without a judge providing oversight about the correctness of that decision. He believed the answer was no and felt that trial judges can appropriately decide if there is evidence supporting the initial allegations.

This year, the legislature overruled the Supreme Court and adopted Gabriel’s dissenting view. The governor signed the bill into law earlier this month.

However, days after the bill signing, a three-judge Court of Appeals panel addressed a question not explicitly covered by the new law, and potentially not covered in the R.M.P. decision: Does a child’s legal representative have the ability on their own to seek termination of a parent’s legal rights after a child has been deemed neglected?

The Chaffee County Department of Human Services filed a neglect petition against a mother and father. A judge found the child to be neglected and imposed a treatment plan for the parents that included substance use and domestic violence components.

In February 2025, the child’s “guardian ad litem” moved to terminate the parents’ legal rights, to which the county did not object. The judge granted the motion after a hearing.

The appellate panel compared the case to the Supreme Court’s R.M.P. decision and found a key difference. Whereas the Supreme Court focused on a child’s representative’s ability to pursue a case before a formal neglect finding, the Chaffee County appeal involved the phase between the neglect finding and the termination of rights.

“To begin, we recognize that in R.M.P. the supreme court used the word ‘proceeding’ on a few occasions when describing the State’s role in prosecuting a dependency or neglect petition,” wrote Judge Melissa C. Meirink in the June 4 opinion. But “in context, we conclude that the opinion only applies to the first phase of a dependency or neglect proceeding.”

She noted that the Supreme Court had discussed the state’s right to intervene in family relationships to protect children’s welfare. As a result, Meirink reasoned that R.M.P. applied to the government’s historical role of initiating a child neglect case and pursuing it until a formal neglect decision is issued.

“R.M.P. doesn’t apply to this matter,” she concluded for herself and Judge Katharine E. Lum, upholding the decision to allow the child’s legal representative to pursue termination.

Judge Jerry N. Jones wrote separately, indicating that he harbored doubts about the majority’s discovery of a seeming loophole in the Supreme Court’s decision.

“But because the majority’s conclusion is plausible and I’m not able to conclude with sufficient certainty that the majority is wrong, I concur in the result,” he wrote.

Jones added that there were reasons to believe the Supreme Court had intended to block non-governmental parties from pursuing child neglect proceedings more broadly.

“But in light of the uncertainty R.M.P. has engendered, I would urge the supreme court to clarify the reach of R.M.P.,” he wrote.

Chris Henderson, executive director of the Office of the Child’s Representative, said his office was relieved to see the Court of Appeals recognize that children, as parties to neglect cases, retain the right to “basic process.”

“The language in R.M.P. combined with the timing of that decision,” he said, “led to challenges to youth standing in all aspects of these proceedings and our attorneys have had to litigate basic rights and standing issues at a truly alarming rate in the trial courts.”

The Office of Respondent Parents’ Counsel, which represents parents in neglect cases, declined to comment.

The case is People in the Interest of C.N.T.