Vaidik, J.
The State requested authorization to file a delinquency petition against eighteen-year-old B.H. based on an act he allegedly committed when he was seventeen. The juvenile court denied the State’s request, believing that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction because B.H. had turned eighteen. The State appeals. B.H. doesn’t dispute that the juvenile court had subject-matter jurisdiction and erred by concluding otherwise. But he asks us to dismiss the appeal, arguing that the juvenile court’s order isn’t one the State can appeal. We disagree.
Indiana Code section 35-38-4-2 identifies the matters the State can appeal in criminal and delinquency cases. The list includes “an order granting a motion to dismiss one (1) or more counts of an indictment or information.” We hold that an order rejecting a delinquency petition for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction is comparable to the dismissal of an indictment or information. Therefore, the State is entitled to appeal the juvenile court’s ruling. And because the ruling was incorrect, we reverse.
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The State contends the juvenile court erred by concluding that it lacks subject matter jurisdiction to hear a delinquency petition against B.H. It cites Indiana Code section 31-30-1-1(a)(1), which provides that a juvenile court generally has “exclusive original jurisdiction” when a “child” is alleged to be a delinquent child, and Indiana Code section 31-9-2-13(d)(2), which provides that “child” includes a person who—like B.H.—is eighteen, nineteen, or twenty but “is charged with a delinquent act committed before the person’s eighteenth birthday[.]”
B.H. doesn’t dispute that the juvenile court has subject-matter jurisdiction under these statutes and erred by ruling otherwise. Nonetheless, he argues that we shouldn’t reverse the court’s decision. He asks us to dismiss the appeal. He contends that the juvenile court’s orders don’t fall under Indiana Code section 35-38-4-2, which specifies when the State can appeal in delinquency cases. He also argues that even if the orders are appealable, they were final orders and the State should have filed a notice of appeal within thirty days of the motion to correct error being denied—by May 22—rather than following the procedure for a discretionary interlocutory appeal, which resulted in the notice of appeal not being filed until June 26. We conclude that the juvenile court’s orders are appealable under Section 35-38-4-2. We also find that while the orders were final and the State used the wrong appeal procedure, deviation from our appellate rules under Appellate Rule 1 is appropriate in this case.
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As B.H. notes, our Supreme Court has held that a juvenile court’s “discretionary decision” to disapprove a delinquency petition doesn’t fall under subsection (a)(1). State v. I.T., 4 N.E.3d 1139, 1142 (Ind. 2014). That was a reference to Indiana Code section 31-37-10-2(2), under which a juvenile court can disapprove the filing of a delinquency petition if it finds there is not probable cause to believe that (1) “the child is a delinquent child” or (2) “it is in the best interests of the child or the public that the petition be filed.” Here, however, the juvenile court didn’t make a “discretionary decision” to reject the State’s filing. The court believed (incorrectly) that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction and was therefore required to reject the State’s filing. B.H. makes no argument why such a non-discretionary, threshold legal determination should be treated the same as a discretionary disapproval under Section 31-3710-2(2). And it shouldn’t be. Lack of subject-matter jurisdiction is a textbook basis for dismissal of a case, so such a finding is the exact sort of ruling contemplated by Section 35-38-4-2(a)(1).
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So we are left with a situation where the State was entitled to appeal under Section 35-38-4-2 but followed the wrong appeal procedure. We must decide whether to dismiss the appeal or to excuse the error under Appellate Rule 1, which provides that an appellate court “may, upon the motion of a party or the Court’s own motion, permit deviation” from the appellate rules. Three facts lead us to invoke Appellate Rule 1. First, while the State didn’t file a notice of appeal by May 22, it did meet the deadlines for seeking an interlocutory appeal. See App. R. 14(B). Second, while this is not actually an interlocutory appeal, both the juvenile court and this Court treated it as an interlocutory appeal and allowed the State to bring such an appeal. Third, no attorney entered an appearance for B.H., in either the juvenile court or this Court, until after those things had happened, so there was never any objection or opposition to the State’s erroneous approach. This wasn’t B.H.’s fault, but it helps explain how the appeal went down this path. For these reasons, we decline to dismiss the State’s appeal, and we reverse the juvenile court’s denial of the State’s request to file a delinquency petition against B.H.
Reversed.
Altice, C.J., and Crone, J., concur.