Today's Iowa Supreme Court decision in Harder v. Anderson, Arnold, Arnold, Dicket Jensen Gullickson and Sanger, L.L.P. et al, available online here, holds that parents who are joint legal custodians do not have an absolute right to obtain copies of their children's medical, counselling, and therapy records.
The case arose when a parent sent a valid authorization to release records to her children's counsellor. The counsellor refused to release verbatim copies of the records, but offered to meet with the parent to discuss the children's treatment. The parent apparently refused these offers from the therapist and instead chose to file suit for a mandatory injunction requiring release of the written records.
The decision holds that the joint legal custodial rights granted by Iowa Code Chapter 598 do not mandate or require disclosure of this information to parents. Further, the best interests of the child always take precendence over the parent's legal rights in the event of a conflict between the two. Under the particular facts of this case as applied to that legal principle, the court found that the children's best interests were in fact protected by not releasing the information.
