By Michael Phillips | Father & Co.

There is a routine in many Maryland family courts that few outsiders understand—until it happens to them. The system calls it “non-appearance.” The parent feels it as erasure.

In the case of Jeffrey Reichert v. Hornbeck, the Anne Arundel County Family Court moved forward with at least five hearings without Reichert’s participation, despite repeated, documented requests for reasonable accommodations under federal disability law. That sequence of events reveals a structural problem in Maryland’s judiciary: courts creating records and making decisions without hearing from a disabled parent who has asked to be heard.

This is not procedural happenstance. It is how the system operates.

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Federal Court Said What Family Court Wouldn’t

On January 13, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a Memorandum Opinion and Order in Reichert v. Hornbeck confirming that Reichert is entitled to accommodations under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act. The court granted his motion for reasonable accommodations—specifically recognizing that remote participation (video or phone) is a necessary and lawful accommodation to allow meaningful access to litigation.

This aligns with the Supreme Court’s foundational disability access precedent in Tennessee v. Lane, which recognized that government entities may be sued when they deny disabled litigants access to courts.

Yet while the federal court was still assessing those rights, the Anne Arundel County Family Court proceeded without him. Requests for accommodation, filed in advance, were either denied or left unresolved, and the docket moved forward. Then the record hardened, with notes of “non-appearance” that would later be described as a choice rather than a consequence of exclusion.

This is how family court erases a litigant.

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Maryland Judges Made Decisions While Ignoring Disability Barriers

The Anne Arundel County Family Court is the same court whose rulings and calendar dominated Reichert’s case long before federal intervention. In its appellate opinion, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals detailed a series of custody and contempt proceedings originating in that circuit.

The court, with judges including Judge Shaw and others on the Court of Special Appeals panel, upheld a Circuit Court record filled with orders that restricted Reichert’s communication with his son, altered custody, and imposed supervised or limited contact rights while the underlying access issues were unresolved.

At no point did the state court meaningfully reconcile:

• repeated ADA accommodation requests,
• the medical barriers Reichert articulated,
• and its own insistence on moving the docket forward.

Instead, absence was presumed voluntary. Consequences were not merely procedural—they became punitive.

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What “Non-Appearance” Really Means

Family courts like Anne Arundel’s have institutional incentives to clear dockets: hearings, conferences, motions all have deadlines and calendars. But when a parent’s disability limits their ability to appear physically—and the court refuses accommodation—the absence is not a personal choice. It is a systemic exclusion.

The record created by such hearings becomes a weapon:
judges refer to attendance history, docket notes become evidence of disengagement, and subsequent rulings treat absence as consent.

The federal ADA ruling in Reichert’s favor—granting remote access—came after that record had already formed. That means the federal finding of rights does not automatically erase the effects of what family court wrote before the accommodation was recognized.

This reveals a gap not in law, but in practice.

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Accountability Starts With Naming Names and Patterns

Maryland’s judiciary, including family courts in Anne Arundel County, must be held accountable for practices that allow hearings to proceed while disability access remains unresolved.

Two lines of authority illustrate the problem clearly:

1. Supreme Court precedent in Tennessee v. Lane confirms that disabled litigants have a fundamental right to courthouse access that cannot be denied by state systems.
2. The U.S. District Court in Reichert v. Hornbeck confirmed Reichert’s reasonable accommodation rights in federal court.

Yet in Maryland’s own family court, under judges and magistrates within Anne Arundel County, the docket moved on without him.

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Exclusion Creates Its Own Narrative

When judges proceed without a parent, the record morphs into something unrecoverable. A parent’s absence becomes evidence of failure to appear. Those notes, written into court minutes and files, shape credibility assessments in later hearings. They inform contempt findings, custody adjustments, and supervised visitation decisions. And they do so before the court resolves whether the absence was caused by exclusion.

This is why access before adjudication matters more than access after the fact. A federal ADA victory does little good when the family court has already written its conclusions into the record.

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Maryland Must Change the Model

Maryland’s judicial systems cannot continue to pretend that disability requests are procedural distractions. They must be treated as fundamental access issues—not optional accommodations to be decided after the docket runs out.

When a judge like those in Anne Arundel County hears argument after argument while ignoring chronic exclusion issues, the consequence is not just unfair. It undermines the legitimacy of the family court itself.

This pattern of exclusion is not accidental. It is structural.

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The Real Story Is Visible in the Record

The documents from both state and federal proceedings show what any parent who has faced family court already knows:

• The system moves without you unless access is forcibly secured.
• Absent litigants are written out of their cases, even when their absence was caused by denied accommodations.
• Federal law is clear; Maryland practice is not.

Until Maryland family courts adopt policies that pause proceedings for unresolved ADA requests, require clear judicial findings on disability exclusion, and protect litigants from adverse procedural consequences caused by denied access, the system will continue to manufacture “non-appearance” outcomes that are nothing of the sort.