Mao Ju, aka Ju Mao v. Forest M. Bright

Whether a State that prices the transcript of the dispositive hearing beyond an indigent parent’s reach, orders her English testimony excluded from any transcript, denies the statutory substitute on the ground that a transcript is “available,” and then affirms the judgment for want of a record violates the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment under Griffin v. Illinois, Boddie v. Connecticut, and M.L.B. v. S.L.J.

Whether the constitutional safeguards this Court has recognized for the parent-child relationship depend on the substance of a deprivation of parental rights or on the label the State attaches to the proceeding, where state custody orders have deprived a parent of custody continuously for eight years without any finding of parental unfitness.