LUTHMANN NOTE: Kyra’s Law is simple. It requires judges to inquire into the child’s safety if they choose to flip custody from one parent to another parent, guardian, or the state foster care system. So, what’s controversial about that, Kathy Hochul? Everything, according to an unofficial group of New York State Family Court Judges connected to the GOOZ and THE special interest. Said another way, in my younger days we used to sing an irreverent rugby song. One of the verses was: “Who can take an orphan? Sell him to a fag. And watch him get raped while he’s tied, bound, and gagged.” If you don’t see that’s what is going on here, you’re not paying attention. A robe gives someone authority in a courtroom. It does not give their lobbying campaign immunity from public scrutiny, or Kathy Hochul a permission slip to let a crooked family court judge sell an orphan to a fag. This piece is “The Judges’ Protection Racket,” first available on The Family Court Circus.
(NEW YORK, NEW YORK) – New York’s Family Court Judges Association has found something worth fighting for: the right to keep the Legislature out of its professional comfort zone. Presented with a bill designed to require judges to confront danger and risk to a child before deciding on a custody flip, the association asked Gov. Kathy Hochul to veto it.
The objections are pure buillshit. Workload concerns, disruption, and diminished discretion. A child-safety reform reached the courthouse door, and the welcoming committee started counting the inconveniences, particularly to a controlling special interest.
The judges’ association says the bill could have “unintended consequences” that undermine its purpose. That deserves examination. So does “the consequence” the judges plainly intend: preserving their authority to run custody proceedings under the existing system. Their objection to losing discretion is the tell. When the people being regulated organize to defeat the regulation, they have entered the special-interest business. A robe does not make lobbying disinterested, any more than a suppository makes a hospital billing dispute a medical diagnosis.
The Blog’s charge is institutional self-protection for cash-for-kids. The published record establishes something mundane and fundamentally destructive: a professional association defending its members’ power while describing that defense as concern for the people subject to it.
Kyra Franchetti was two when her father killed her during a court-ordered visit in 2016. Jacqueline Franchetti has spent the years since campaigning for changes to custody proceedings that might spare another family that loss. Her daughter’s name now appears on legislation that passed both chambers unanimously. The judges’ association wants the governor to stop it. Ask yourself why?
Kyra’s Law, S5998C, retains the best-interests standard while making child safety the threshold issue. It directs reviews of relevant evidence when facially credible allegations raise serious concerns and requires explanations for custody conditions. It also limits unsupported assumptions about protective parents and children who resist contact.
Read those provisions and then ask what kind of professional emergency they create. Judges would still judge. Allegations would still require examination. Evidence would still matter. What becomes harder is letting an elastic conclusion swallow an uncomfortable fact.
Also consider the moral imbalance. A parent lives with the consequences of a judge’s custody order long after the hearing ends. The penguin moves to the next case. When an institution insists it needs maximum flexibility over decisions with consequences that fall overwhelmingly on other people, skepticism is a civic obligation. The association is asking for deference precisely where deference should have to earn its keep.
The judge’s association’s reported warning of an “overwhelming increase” in hearings needs arithmetic. Which provisions, how many proceedings, how many hours, at what cost? A genuine staffing problem calls for staffing. A drafting defect calls for a specific correction.
Asking Hochul to veto the entire measure is a much larger demand, and professional prestige is no substitute for showing the work. But it’s not about showing the work. All of that is window-dressing. The judges’ association has a “client” because the judges and Kathy Hochul have a special interest, and in family court, it is THE special interest.
The courthouse interest extends beyond the bench’s calendar. Broad discretion determines how much authority appointed professionals acquire over a family. The danger is that an expert’s recommendation can become the judge’s escape hatch: accept the report, adopt its vocabulary, and let the credential carry the decision. The vast majority of the time, it does.
The Blog’s “Congressional Divorce Gin Mill” examines that professional apparatus in a different, high-profile custody fight in Ohio involving U.S Congressman Max Miller. Its relevance here lies in the structure of the problem. Everyone screams EXPERT, EXPERT, EXPERT. Safety and well-being are a distant afterthought in a court that feeds parents the line: “best interests of the child.”
New York’s own appellate courts have caught that failure in print. In * Matter of Montoya v. Davis*, a forensic evaluator recommended transferring custody to the father and cutting the mother off for at least six months. The appellate court found “pervasive and manifest bias” and described the evaluator as an “overly zealous advocate” for the father. Family Court had recognized her lack of neutrality yet adopted her conclusions without the necessary independent consideration.
That was a judicial finding, not a disgruntled parent’s Facebook post. The appellate court also recognized evidence that the mother had interfered with the father’s relationship. It nevertheless rejected the unsupported transfer of custody. Proof of one parent’s shortcomings did not give an expert permission to write the ending.
This is where the GOOZ enter: the Guild of Official Opinion Zealots, The Blog’s “operational” name for professionals who mistake a credential for a warrant to govern a family. Their most useful product is certainty. A complicated child becomes a diagnosis-shaped explanation; an uncertain recommendation arrives with the confidence of a laboratory result.
The institutional temptation is obvious. Independent judgment is difficult. Borrowed certainty comes bound in a report.
The palatable special interest they want you to examine is “professional authority,” alongside the imaginary spreadsheet proving every evaluator loses money if this bill passes. On that point, Kyra’s Law does not abolish custody evaluations, and additional proceedings could generate additional legal work. The “financial-conspiracy” claim outruns the evidence. The power argument does not.
My earlier reporting on the litigation over Linda Gottlieb and Turning Points’ reunification services explored allegations about professional recommendations, no-contact periods, and the terms imposed on parents seeking reunification. That coverage also included defenses of parental-alienation concepts and objections to reform proposals. Those disputes are contested; they illustrate why nobody selling a custody theory should receive an exemption from scrutiny.
The bill would prohibit treating reasonable protective behavior, standing alone, as failure to support the other parent’s relationship. It would also prohibit presuming that a child’s reluctance was caused by the other parent, or awarding custody solely to repair that relationship. Those are specific restrictions on judicial reasoning, not a declaration that parents never manipulate children.
For a professional accustomed to explaining resistance through a favored theory, those restrictions are inconvenient. The theory must survive contact with the particular child and the particular evidence. “The child refuses contact” no longer supplies its own explanation. A protective parent’s alarm cannot, by itself, become the case against that parent.
That is a meaningful challenge to the authority illustrated in Montoya. The expert loses an automatic inference. The judge loses a shortcut. Neither loss warrants public mourning, particularly because, in applicable cases, the pedos lose their Title IV-E E-ZPass.
The same principle applies to written findings. Requiring reasons makes it easier to compare the court’s decision with what the evidence supported. It does not create accountability from nothing; appellate review already exists. It strengthens the record on which accountability depends. Any institution seeking exemption from that discipline should expect a hostile cross-examination.
The Office of Court Administration says the statewide court system takes no position. That’s rich.
If OCA is taken at its word, the judges’ association’s veto campaign is “unofficial” and therefore should not be dressed up as the unanimous voice of New York’s judiciary. It is an association’s intervention, and the public deserves to know how that intervention was assembled.
Release the complete letter, its supporting analysis, and the process used to approve it. Identify the authors, the members who authorized it, and the organizations consulted. Disclose whether anyone sought advice from evaluator groups, bar associations, or other professionals whose influence depends on custody practice. Those relationships would require examination, not an automatic finding of misconduct. Secrecy would merely force everyone to argue about shadows.
Hochul should put a pen through every unsupported adjective and ask for the evidence underneath. If there is a due-process defect, identify it. If there is a resource gap, price it. If there is a better safety procedure, produce the language. A demand to preserve discretion cannot be allowed to masquerade as the complete answer.
The association has already made its priorities fair game. It chose to lobby against a bill carrying explicit safety and explanation requirements. It cannot then object when the public asks whether the workload complaint is also a defense of professional territory.
A courthouse belongs to the public. It is not a private club whose members get to decide how much accountability disrupts the atmosphere.
A governor reviewing this legislation owes both children and accused parents a workable, fair process. Taking allegations seriously requires testing them, and testing them requires resources. None of that obliges Hochul to accept the judges’ preferred remedy of stopping the bill. The association must demonstrate why its proposed course protects families better than a funded, carefully implemented safety review.
But Kathy Hochul won’t because she is a wretched hack, bought and sold by the special interests, and in this case, THE special interest.
The Assembly’s announcement of Kyra’s Law’s passage identifies the risks lawmakers want examined, including abuse, stalking, and threats. Those are concrete subjects for judicial attention. The association should answer with an equally concrete explanation of what it would change and how its alternative would protect children.
That is the question the ceremonial sympathy cannot answer. Condolences are easy to sign. So are letters protecting professional discretion. The difficult work is constructing a system that examines danger competently, treats the parties fairly and leaves an intelligible record when a judge exercises power over a child.
Kyra’s Law should be judged against that task. The judges’ veto request should face the same test. Their expertise entitles them to be heard; it does not entitle them to win.
The Blog’s verdict on the politics is straightforward: this is institutional self-preservation in judicial stationery. The association has put its members’ discretion and operating preferences squarely into the fight. Hochul should make it prove that preserving those interests serves the children whose lives its members control.
If the objection is really about resources, fund the work. If it is about keeping “the old latitude” intact, say so publicly. New York’s parents deserve much more than THE GOOZ and their professional self-interest wearing a child-welfare costume, while they sell an orphan to a fag out the back door of the courthouse with a smile.
