Was Federal Law Followed?

1. The right to raise your own child is a fundamental constitutional liberty

The law: The U.S. Supreme Court has held, repeatedly, that a parent's interest in the "care, custody, and control" of their children is one of the oldest fundamental liberty interests protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000), the Court called it "perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests" it has ever recognized. In Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645 (1972), the Court held that a parent's interest in the "companionship, care, custody, and management" of their children carries a constitutional weight that ordinary government interests do not.

What happened in my case: This is the right that was suspended, indefinitely, by the December 1, 2025 order -- entered at a hearing I was medically unable to attend and had already been denied the accommodation to attend remotely. A right the Supreme Court calls one of the oldest it recognizes was taken away without me present, without written findings, and without the process the Constitution requires for a right of that weight.

2. Before the state can seriously interfere with that right, it must meet a heightened burden of proof

The law: In Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745 (1982), the Supreme Court held that before a state can sever the rights of a parent in their child, due process requires the state to support its case with at least clear and convincing evidence -- not the lower "preponderance of the evidence" standard used in ordinary civil disputes. Santosky addressed termination of parental rights specifically, but the constitutional principle behind it -- that the seriousness of interfering with the parent-child relationship demands a correspondingly serious burden of proof -- is exactly why Michigan's own parenting-time statute, MCL 722.27a(3), independently requires clear and convincing evidence of endangerment before parenting time can be restricted. See my Michigan Law page for that statute.

What happened in my case: The December 1, 2025 order suspending my parenting time contains no clear and convincing evidence of endangerment -- no evidence of any kind is cited in the order at all. When a state court fails to meet even its own statute's evidentiary standard for interfering with a parent-child relationship, it is failing the constitutional floor Santosky describes, not just a state procedural rule.

3. Seizing a child from a parent's custody is a "seizure" the Fourth Amendment governs

The law: Federal courts have held that removing a child from a parent's custody is a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and that it generally requires a warrant, a court order genuinely supported by evidence, or a true emergency -- not merely an official's say-so. Courts have also recognized, under the Fourteenth Amendment, that parents and children have a well-established constitutional right to live together without government interference except in a genuine emergency.

What happened in my case: The December 1, 2025 order does not merely deny parenting time -- its own text orders that "the Plaintiff shall seek and obtain the assistance of any local, county, or state law enforcement agency to safely retrieve the minor child, Maryam Jones... from the custody or physical control of the Defendant or any third party currently withholding the child." The order gives police the power to locate and seize a specific named child. It does so without describing any emergency, without a finding of immediate danger, and while the actual, documented emergency on file -- two separate clinicians' warnings that removal itself endangered Maryam -- pointed the opposite direction.

4. Before removing a child, the state must document "reasonable efforts" to avoid it

The law: The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 671(a)(15), requires that states receiving federal child-welfare funding make "reasonable efforts" to prevent a child's removal from the home, except in narrow circumstances involving aggravated abuse that are not alleged anywhere in my case. This requirement exists because Congress determined that removing a child from a parent is serious enough that it cannot be the state's first resort.

What happened in my case: No order in my case identifies what alternatives to police retrieval and indefinite parenting-time suspension were considered and rejected, or why removal -- rather than any less drastic step -- was necessary. Two mental-health agencies had already told the court that removal itself was the danger to Maryam, which is the opposite of the finding this framework is meant to require before a removal order is entered.

5. Jailing someone with a serious medical condition and ignoring it violates the Constitution

The law: In Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976), the Supreme Court held that deliberate indifference to a serious medical need is unconstitutional -- for convicted prisoners, under the Eighth Amendment, and for pretrial or contempt detainees, under the same "deliberate indifference" standard applied through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. A serious medical need that the government knows about and disregards is not a matter of ordinary jail administration -- it is a constitutional violation.

What happened in my case: I was jailed for approximately six weeks after missing one court date, with a documented history of heart and lung disease, a compromised immune system, and advanced tuberculosis exposure already on file with the court. I was denied phone access for the first two and a half weeks of that jailing -- the same weeks I was diagnosed with lung cancer -- and I was exposed to both COVID-19 and tuberculosis while incarcerated. At a later hearing, when the stress of the proceedings caused me to have a panic attack in the courtroom itself, I was jailed during that panic attack without any medical evaluation.

6. Federal disability law required real accommodation, not a form checkbox

The law: Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. § 12131 et seq.) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. § 794) require state courts to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled litigants, evaluated individually, unless doing so would be an undue burden or a fundamental alteration of the proceeding.

What happened in my case: I have covered this in detail on its own page. In short: my request to appear remotely for the December 1, 2025 hearing -- the same hearing that suspended my parenting time -- was denied weeks earlier, despite a documented cancer diagnosis and history of heart and lung disease. See What Happened to My ADA Rights, Explained Plainly for the full account and the Court's own letters.

7. The lawsuits I've filed use the federal law made for exactly this

The law: 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is the federal statute that allows a person to sue a state or local government official for violating their federal constitutional rights while acting under color of state law. It is the primary vehicle through which the constitutional violations described on this page can be brought into federal court. I should be honest about its biggest limitation: judges are generally immune from Section 1983 liability for actions taken in their official judicial capacity, even when a ruling is wrong -- which is exactly why one of my lawsuits is framed specifically around actions taken in an individual, non-judicial capacity, rather than the rulings themselves. See The Lawsuits for the full list of what has been filed.

The pattern, put simply

The federal Constitution and federal statutes exist to put a floor under what any state court can do to a parent and their children -- a floor that does not move no matter which state you are in. In my case: a right the Supreme Court calls among the oldest it recognizes was suspended without the heightened proof the Constitution requires; a child was ordered seized by police without a described emergency; no reasonable-efforts finding appears anywhere in the record; a documented serious medical condition was met with a phone blackout, disease exposure, and an untreated panic attack in a jail cell; and a documented disability was met with a denied accommodation request for the exact hearing that decided all of it. Each of these sits on top of a different federal protection. Together, they are the basis of the lawsuits I have filed.