People v. Manzanares, Jr.
2025 COA 62. No. 22CA1024. Mandatory Protection Order—Constitutional Right of Familial Association—Legal Parent With Intact Parental Rights.
July 3, 2025
Manzanares was arrested for domestic violence against S.M., the mother of his children D.M. and A.M. He was charged with one count of first degree burglary; one count of second degree burglary; two counts of assault in the second degree; two counts of menacing with a deadly weapon; two counts of child abuse (one for each child); and one count of violation of a protection order. The trial court entered a mandatory protection order (MPO) against Manzanares ordering him to not contact or directly or indirectly communicate with the listed victims, S.M., D.M., and A.M. The MPO’s expiration date is September 11, 2025. The domestic violence case was tried in 2015, and a jury acquitted Manzanares of first degree burglary, second degree burglary, one count of assault in the second degree, and one count of child abuse concerning D.M. The jury found him guilty of the lesser included offense of second degree criminal trespass, one count of assault in the second degree, felony menacing, misdemeanor menacing, one count of child abuse concerning A.M., and violation of a protection order. A court of appeals division subsequently overturned Manzanares’s conviction for child abuse concerning A.M., and the People dismissed the charge on remand. Manzanares tried unsuccessfully to modify the MPO concerning D.M. and A.M. three times, most recently in 2022. In denying the 2022 motion, the trial court did not make findings about Manzanares’s right to familial association with D.M. and A.M.
On appeal, Manzanares argued that the trial court erred by denying his 2022 motion to modify the MPO without making findings required to justify infringing on his constitutional right to familial association. The People contended that Manzanares failed to establish a right to familial association with his children as required by Salah v. People, 2024 CO 54, so the trial court didn’t err. In Salah, the defendant argued that a condition of his probation violated his right to familial association with his minor nephew. The court held that whether a probation condition that restricts contact with an extended family member implicates a probationer’s right to familial association depends on whether the probationer demonstrates the nature of their relationship with that family member. However, Manzanares is a legal parent with intact parental rights, so he was not required to make an affirmative showing that he had a substantial relationship with his children before he could invoke his constitutional right of familial association. And when an MPO with a no-contact provision infringes on a defendant’s familial association right, such provision survives a constitutional challenge only if the trial court specifically finds that compelling circumstances justify the provision and the order’s purpose cannot be accomplished by less restrictive means. Accordingly, the trial court erred by not making factual findings on how the MPO affected Manzanares’s right to familial association, whether it improperly deprived him of this right, and whether a less drastic alternative to the MPO existed to protect the children’s best interests while permitting Manzanares some contact with his children.
The order was reversed and the case was remanded with instructions.