Terminating the Parental Rights of Mothers with Disabilities: An Empirical Legal Analysis

A sizable body of scholarship indicates parents with disabilities – including physical, intellectual, psychiatric, and sensory disabilities – experience pervasive inequities that threaten their fundamental right to parenthood. In particular, compared to nondisabled parents, parents with disabilities are overrepresented in the child welfare system, receive inadequate family preservation and reunification services, and have disproportionate rates of termination of parental rights. Despite extensive legal and social science scholarship, however, there are no empirical analyses of judicial opinions to identify factors that predict termination of parental rights in cases involving parents with disabilities.