Nevada family-law case summaries

This case is about how an undocumented child living in Nevada can ask a state court to make the findings she needs to apply to the federal government for "Special Immigrant Juvenile" (SIJ) status -- a category of immigration relief for children who cannot safely return to a parent in their home country. To apply, the child first needs a state court to make three specific findings. Only after those findings are made can the child go to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and ask for SIJ status itself. The state judge does not decide whether the child gets SIJ status; the judge just makes findings that the federal agency will later review. A.A. was born in El Salvador in 2004. Her mother, Amaya, came to the United States when A.A. was two. A.A. lived with her father until, according to the opinion, he "kicked her out" when she was ten, after which she lived with her grandmother. A.A. says her father emotionally and physically abused her. At twelve, A.A. moved to Las Vegas to live with her mother, stepfather, and half-siblings. She does not want to return to El Salvador. Amaya filed a custody case in district court. The father did not respond, so the court entered a default and gave Amaya sole physical custody and both parents joint legal custody. Amaya then asked the same court to make the three SIJ findings. The district court refused. It said: (1) granting Amaya custody was not the same as "appointing" her to have custody, and (2) Amaya had not shown that A.A. could not reunify with both parents -- only with her father. The Nevada Supreme Court reversed. It held, first, that when a Nevada district court grants a parent physical custody of a child, that order does place the child under the custody of "a person appointed by the court" for purposes of the SIJ findings. Second, the court held that the SIJ reunification requirement is satisfied when reunification with just one parent is not viable due to abuse, abandonment, or neglect -- the law does not require that reunification with both parents be impossible. The court emphasized that the federal statute uses the word "or" in "one or both" parents, and the court joined the majority of states that read it the same way. Because the district court got both points wrong and never reached the third finding (whether returning A.A. to El Salvador is in her best interest), the Supreme Court sent the case back for the district court to redo the analysis. One justice dissented, arguing that the Nevada statute authorizing district courts to make these SIJ findings, NRS 3.2203, lists the specific kinds of cases it applies to -- and Amaya's custody case (filed under NRS Chapter 125C) is not on that list. In the dissent's view, Amaya should have filed for guardianship under NRS Chapter 159A instead, and could still do so.