Will the Supreme Court Take on Child Abuse Dispute of 4th Amendment? UPDATED

The question being considered on Tuesday March 1, 2011: Is it a violation of the 4th amendment (unreasonable search and seizure) to question a child without warrant or parental consent and in the absence of an emergency? This is the first major child protective services case to go before the Supreme Court in 21 years.

In 2003, a nine-year-old girl was questioned in a school conference room about her father allegedly sexually abusing her. She initially denied these allegations, but changed her story after 2 hours of intensive questioning.

 

“The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, weighing a lawsuit filed by the girl’s family, ruled that her rights had been violated. The state of Oregon appealed, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

 

Justices Weigh Dispute Over Child Abuse Cases

[Associated Press 2/26/11 by David Crary]

 

More information about this case can be found here.

 

Update: The Family Legal Project of Nebraska and the Family Advocacy Movement are two of the 70 groups that filed amicus briefs in support of Camreta v. Greene. The Family Advocacy Movement will additionally hold a rally on Tuesday from noon to 1PM in support of the family.

 

““This case speaks to problems that exist in our state and every state,” said Wendy Worrell, a volunteer advocate for the Family Legal Project. “These are not problems that can be pinned on individual social workers, police officers, school officials or others.

 

“Until these system-wide issues are addressed, these things will continue to happen. I hope this case leads to a national conversation about the constitutional rights of families involved in the child welfare system.”

 

 

Nebraska Group on Family’s Side

[Omaha World Herald 2/28/11 by Kevin Cole]

 

Update 2:  Some insight into what went on in the Court:

 

“The justices eventually turned to the Fourth Amendment issue during Kubitschek’s argument, and their questions indicated some skepticism about how to provide clarity on how non-school officials should proceed in child welfare cases.

 

Asked what she would recommend the court do, Kubitschek said that it should be established that a “long interview” with a child should be considered “presumptively unconstitutional” without a warrant, court order or exigent circumstances.

 

That prompted several questions about how length could matter, when the workers would have to get court approval for the interview before it began?

 

“So a child protection worker passing in the hall” could ask a child about abuse, “and that’s okay?” Scalia asked. “But a long interview is not?”

 

Another concern expressed by justices was over what interrogations might constitute a seizure, and which would not. Both parties in the Greene cases conceded that a seizure occurred, but Kubitschek was peppered with hypothetical examples by Justices Stephen Breyer and Scalia about different combinations of people who might ask about abuse: a nurse employed by the school, a nurse who was employed by someone else but serviced the school, a child protective services investigator who was not accompanied by police.

 

“We can’t adopt a rule when we don’t know what we’re talking about,” Scalia said.

 

“I was surprised,” said Kubitschek of the justices’ interest in the defining aspects of seizure. “Because both sides had conceded it I thought it was kind of off the table, but it obviously was not, it was very much on the justices’ minds.”

 

The Greene cases drew a slew of amicus briefs on both sides. The Obama administration, along with 40 states and the National Association of State Social Workers, filed on behalf of Oregon.”

Supreme Court Mulls Rules for Child Abuse Interviews on School Grounds

[Youth Today 3/1/11 by John Kelly]

 

Update 3: This editorial describes many of the particulars of how the 9-year-old girl was interrogated.

 

As the continuous interrogation of the girl by a male sheriff and male social worker was reaching the 2-hour point in the conference room and school was about to be let out for the day, “S.G. continued to deny that her father had ever abused her. Yet once the school buses started arriving to take her classmates home, S.G. found herself overcome with fear that she would be left behind. At that point, S.G. says she decided to lie and say yes to whatever the men asked, “just to get out of the room.” Upon returning home, S.G. was further traumatized to find the same two men in her house, questioning her mother. These encounters left the little girl feeling so nauseous that she later vomited five times and was unable to eat dinner.

 

Despite the fact that Alford had a tape recorder with him, no recording or documentation of the questions asked of S.G. during the two-hour interrogation exist. Nevertheless, based on the accounting of the two men and despite S.G.’s repeated denials of any abuse by her father, S.G. and her sister were subsequently removed from her parents’ care and placed in foster care for three weeks. They were eventually returned to their mother’s care after physical examinations failed to uncover any evidence of sexual abuse. Charges levied against their father were subsequently dropped.”

 

Are We Really Mere Creatures of the State?

[The White Mountain Independent 3/1/11 by John Whitehead]

 

Update 4: Full case discussion can be found at NCCPR case webpage .

 

Update 5: Verdict: Moot

 

“The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a lower court’s ruling that Oregon authorities needed warrants to question children about sex abuse.

 

A warrant for such questioning became necessary after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2009 ruled on a case involving a Bend girl, said Oregon Attorney General John Kroger.

 

The 9th Circuit ruling had a “significant impact” on many state agencies and “the advice people gave to their clients,” Kroger said. Some school districts have been reluctant to let child protection workers interview children, state officials said.

 

The 9th Circuit said a child protection investigator and a deputy sheriff should have had warrants before they pulled a 9-year-old girl, known in court papers as S.G., out of her classroom eight years ago to question her about whether her father had sexually abused her.

 

But the Supreme Court did not say in its 7-2 decision whether the lower court was wrong in concluding that the questioning of the girl violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable search and seizure.” Instead, it said the challenge is moot or irrelevant because the girl is almost 18 and living in Florida and would no longer be affected.

 

“She faces not the slightest possibility of being seized in a school in the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction as part of a child abuse investigation,” said Justice Elena Kagan. “When ‘subsequent events make it absolutely clear that the alleged wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur,’ we have no live controversy to review.”

 

Because the case is moot, the 9th Circuit’s decision forcing child social worker Bob Camreta and other authorities to get warrants also is moot, Kagan said. “The happenstance of S.G.’s moving across country and becoming an adult has deprived Camreta of his appeal rights,” she said.

 

Kroger, who argued against the 9th Circuit before the Supreme Court, said he had hoped the Supreme Court would rule on the merits of the case and allow authorities to interview children without warrants or parental permission in sex abuse cases.

 

“Parental consent is a challenge because in a lot of cases, the parent is the suspected abuser,” he said. And getting a warrant poses a Catch-22 because a warrant requires evidence, and often the only way to get evidence in a child abuse case is to talk to the child.

 

No ruling on the merits “means we are going to end up litigating the issues again,” Kroger said.”

 

Supreme Court tosses lower court ruling requiring warrant to question children on abuse

[The Oregonian 5/26/11 by Bill Graves]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update 6: “The state of Oregon has agreed to pay $300,000 to a family whose complaint about an investigation by child protection workers went before the U.S. Supreme Court last year.

The family lawyer and an Oregon Department of Justice spokesman confirmed the out-of-court settlement was reached last month. ”

“The case began in 2003, when a social services caseworker and a deputy sheriff pulled a 9-year-old girl from her Bend classroom and questioned her about alleged sexual abuse by her father, Nimrod Greene. According to the family, the girl falsely incriminated her father because the investigators wouldn’t accept her denials during the two-hour interview and she was worried about missing the school bus home.

The charges against Nimrod Greene were later dropped after a jury could not reach a verdict.

Meanwhile, the girl’s mother, Sarah Greene, sued the men who interrogated her daughter, claiming they should have obtained a warrant or parental consent before removing her from the classroom. The state argued that child abuse investigators initially may lack sufficient evidence to get a warrant and need the ability to interview potential victims at a location away from parents.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the Greene family. The state of Oregon appealed, and the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case last year.

The justices vacated the lower-court decision, but made no ruling on the merits because the girl who was questioned at school is no longer a child and therefore the case is moot.

Oregon Department of Justice spokesman Tony Green said the state had no comment on the settlement.

Miller said the Greenes have left the state: “They moved to Florida and got as far away as they could.”

Oregon settles Bend case that went before US Supreme Court for $300,000

[The Republic 6/20/12 by Steven DuBois/Associated Press]