B.f. Hawk, Jr. and Sue Hawk, Petitioners/appellees v. Robert S. Hawk and Bay K. Hawk, Respondents/appellants

Summary

The Tennessee Supreme Court held that the Grandparents' Visitation Act, T.C.A. § 36-6-301, violates the right to privacy protected by Article I, Section 8 of the Tennessee Constitution as applied to an intact family with fit, married parents who jointly refuse visitation, because absent substantial harm to the child the state lacks a sufficiently compelling justification for substituting its own best-interests judgment for the parents'. It therefore reversed the trial court and Court of Appeals judgments granting the paternal grandparents extensive visitation. Separately, the court sustained Bob Hawk's contempt conviction for conspiring to remove the children from the court's jurisdiction but remanded for resentencing, concluding he could be punished only for a single act of contempt because he lacked the present ability to comply. The court declined to address the parents' challenge to the trial judge's failure to recuse himself.