Like I said. If you think gun owners have had it bad. Trying being a parent, especially a home schooler. This should belp us out. The Constitution lives.
Social workers learn that U.S. Constitution applies to child abuse
investigations
U.S. Court of Appeals is unanimous: CPS cannot trample home school
family's Fourth Amendment rights
YOLO COUNTY, CA - Social workers are bound to obey the U.S.
Constitution when investigating child abuse cases, said a unanimous
three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in an
opinion handed down Thursday, August 26, 1999.
"This opinion will have a nationwide impact. With respect to the
Fourth Amendment, the Ninth Circuit settled the social worker
question once and for all. No longer can social workers enter a home
without either a warrant or probable cause of an emergency," said
Michael Farris, lead attorney for the plaintiffs. "Child Protective
Services agencies have too many times behaved as if there is a social
worker exception to the Fourth Amendment's prohibitions against
illegal searches and seizures," Farris explained, but there is no
such exception, according to the Ninth Circuit ruling in Calabretta
v. Floyd, et al.
The Fourth Amendment rights case was originally filed February 24,
1995, by Robert and Shirley Calabretta in the Eastern District of
California federal court, after a Yolo County policeman and social
worker illegally entered the Calabretta home and strip searched their
three-year-old daughter. District Court Judge Lawrence K. Karlton
ruled that unless there is evidence of an emergency, a social worker
and police officer investigating a report of child abuse must have a
warrant. The Ninth Circuit panel unanimously affirmed that decision
in Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld's opinion. =20
Kleinfeld wrote that forcing the mother to pull down the three-year-
old's pants "invaded ... the mother's dignity and authority in
relation to her own children in her own home. The strip search as
well as the entry stripped the mother of this authority and dignity.
The reasonable expectation of privacy of individuals in their homes
includes the interests of both parents and children in not having
government officials coerce entry in violation of the Fourth
Amendment and humiliate the parents in front of the children."
"It's the best possible opinion for the Calabretta family and for the
rest of the country," Farris said. "The family won on every point we
raised. Police and social workers cannot force their way into
private homes. They were wrong to strip search the three-year-old
daughter. This ruling erases the possibility that the law is not
clear in the rest of the country."
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For the full text of the Court's Decision go to:
http://laws.findlaw.com/9th/9715385.html