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FOURTH AMENDMENT & OTHER CASES FOR EDUCATING UNINVITED SOCIAL WORKERS

Arrendondo v. Locklear

Brokaw v. Mercer County

Calabretta v. Floyd

Croft v. Westmoreland County Children and Youth Serv.

Doe v. Heck

Dubbs v. Head Start

Duchesne v. Sugarman, 566 F.2d 817 (2nd Cir. 1977).

Gomes v. Wood

Good v. Dauphin County Social Serv. for Children & Youth, 891 F.2d 1087 (3rd Cir. 1989).

Groh v. Ramirez

In re Stumbo

J.B. v. Washington County

Loudermilk v. Arpaio, No. CV 06-0636-PHX-EHC (U.S. Dist. Az., Sep. 28, 2007)

Mueller v. Auker, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13172, Case No. 1:04-cv-00399-BLW-HHW (D. Id., Feb. 26, 2007)

P.J. v. State of Utah, 2006 WL 1702585 (D. Ut., Jun. 16, 2006)

Roe v. Texas Dept. of Protective & Regulatory Serv.

Roska v. Peterson, 328 F.3d 1230 (10th Cir. 2003), remand to Roska v. Sneddon, 311 F.Supp.2d 1307 (D. Utah 2004), aff'd Roska ex rel. Roska v. Sneddon, 437 F.3d 964 (10th Cir. 2006); Roska v. Sneddon, Case No. 1:99CV112DAK (D. Utah Mar. 26, 2004); Roska v. Sneddon, 2006 WL 2927751 (D. Ut, Oct. 11, 2006); Roska v. Sneddon, 2007 WL 1557418 (D. Ut, May 25, 2007)

Walker v. City of Orem

Update 3-1-2008

Filed 12/28/07; pub. order 1/25/08

COURT OF APPEAL, FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION ONE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA

In re Antonio G., No. D051079
Orders denying maternal grandmother's request to have children placed with her are reversed and vacated in part where county agency and the juvenile court essentially ignored their duty under Welfare and Institutions Code section 361.3 to properly consider grandmother's request to have her two dependent grandchildren placed with her. The agency did not reevaluate grandmother using the criteria set forth in section 361.3(a), and the juvenile court did not consider those criteria in assessing her as a placement option. Read more... 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
BELTRAN V. SANTA CLARA COUNTY
Filed January 24, 2008

"Furthermore, as prosecutors and others investigating criminal matters have no absolute immunity for their investigatory conduct, a fortiori, social workers conducting investigations have no such immunity. "

“One is innocent until proven guilty.” Perhaps this is the bedrock of Americans’ sense of justice. Its corollary is that one should not be punished until that guilt is established. But there is nothing more punishing than the strategic but sadistic use of pain to force a confession or to gain information. Victims of torture—who tell us that they longed for death—would testify that this punishment is even worse than death. Punishment before guilt is proven must be viewed as anathema to American’s values." --January 6, 2005 Testimony of Douglas A. Johnson, Executive Director The Center for Victims of Torture

Real Life Cases of People Sent to Prison for Crimes That Never Happened:
Imaginary Crimes

Feds Re-affirm Parents' Rights

The recent Walsh vs. Erie County Department of Job and Family Services ruling has brought to the forefront the issue of parents' rights. In that case, it was found that the agency had overstepped it's authority during an investigation, and that caseworkers had not been trained in parent's Fourth Amendment rights. 

Furthermore, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) of June 2003 re-affirms parents' rights. 

What are these rights, and how do these rights impact child welfare work in Ohio? The following excerpts from a guidance paper written by Howard Davidson, Director of the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law, speak to these issues.

Court spanks social workers
Judges: State agents violated Constitution in corporal-punishment probe
Posted: April 18, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Ron Strom
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

Social workers who entered a private Christian school without a warrant and questioned a 10-year-old boy about corporal punishment violated the U.S. Constitution, a federal appeals court has ruled.

Ruling in favor of parents in Milwaukee, Wis., the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday the government employees – Carla Heck, John Wichman and supervisor Christine Hansen – in probing alleged child abuse at Greendale Baptist Academy, violated both the Fourth and 14th Amendments.

"This is a tremendous victory for parental rights," said Steve Crampton, chief counsel for the Center for Law & Policy, which represented the parents in the case – John and Jane Doe v. Carla Heck, et al.

Crampton told WND, "This decision puts a stake in the ground telling [social workers], 'The law applies to you, too.'"

4-16-03 Wisconsin 7th Circuit- Greendale Baptist Church and Academy vs Heck, Wichman, Hansen The Nazi behavior is over?

February 5, 2003
Homeschool Legal Defense Association
Need for a search warrant trips social workers
Ohio authorities not aware of Fourth Amendment protections

In a forceful opinion, US District Judge James G. Carr wrote: “Despite the Defendants’ exaggerated view of their powers, the Fourth Amendment applies to them, as it does to all other officers and agents of the state whose requests to enter, however benign or well-intentioned, are met by a closed door.  There is...no social worker exception to the strictures of the Fourth Amendment.  ...Any agency that expects to send its employees routinely into private homes has a fundamental obligation to ensure that those employees understand the constitutional limits on their authority.”  

“The caseworkers in the Walsh case admitted they had never been taught anything about the Fourth Amendment or search warrants. 

The court further ruled that the police did not have probable cause to detain, frisk, and threaten to arrest Walsh, since he was not breaking any law but merely asserting his “fundamental right to be left alone.”

Oakland Tribune
By Donna Horowitz, Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 10, 2002

County pays mom $400,000 for boys' removal without warrant Deal could change how social workers treat cases

Title 42 USC Section 1983

Sec. 1983. - Civil action for deprivation of rights

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia 

Title 42 USC Section 1983 Information

  Caselaw Bin

http://familyrightsassociation.com/bin/caselaw/

A biased proceeding is not a procedurally adequate one. At a minimum, Due Process requires a hearing before an impartial tribunal. Ward v. Village of Monroeville, 409 U.S. 57, 59-60, 93 S.Ct. 80, 83, 34 L.Ed.2d 267 (1972). This impartial tribunal requirement applies in both civil and criminal cases. Indeed, the requirement that proceedings which adjudicate individuals' interests in life, liberty, or property be free from bias and partiality has been "jealously guarded. Marshall v. Jerrico, 446 U.S. 238, 241-42, 100 S.Ct. 1610, 1613, 64 L.Ed.2d 182 (1980). Thus, this neutrality principle has been applied to a variety of settings, including administrative adjudications, in order to protect the "independent constitutional interest in fair adjudicative procedure." Id. at 241-42 n. 2, 100 S.Ct. at 1613 n. 2. And, it has been invoked in the context of post-termination administrative proceedings. Walker v. City of Berkeley, 951 F.2d 182, 184 (9th Cir.1991) (failure to provide impartial decision maker at the post-termination hearing constitutes constitutional error). Moreover, any bias in the administrative process in Sue's case was not "cured" by the subsequent judicial review in state court.

Generally, an adjudication that is tainted by bias can not be constitutionally redeemed by review in an unbiased tribunal. Fn 15 See Ward, 409 U.S. 57, 93 S.Ct. 80." ...

Nor, in any event, may the State's trial court procedure be deemed constitutionally acceptable simply because the State eventually offers a defendant an impartial adjudication. Petitioner is entitled to a neutral and detached judge in the first instance. Id. at 61-62, 93 S.Ct. at 84. Ward holds that subsequent state court procedures, even if they include de novo review, can not "cure" bias in the initial adjudication. 16 ... The right to procedural due process is 'absolute,' and 'the law recognizes the importance to organized society that those rights be scrupulously observed.'" (Emphasis added.) Clements v. Airport Authority of Washoe County (69 F.3d 321 (9th Cir. 1995)), at 333-334.