{"id":575,"date":"2011-06-01T18:05:26","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T23:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=575"},"modified":"2011-06-01T18:07:32","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T23:07:32","slug":"parental-rights-and-wrongs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=575","title":{"rendered":"Parental Rights and Wrongs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Camreta v. Greene<\/a>, involves parental rights as seen through the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.\u00a0 Well, sort of.\u00a0 That\u2019s what the issue was at the district court level.\u00a0 By the time it arrived in the Supreme Court it was a different matter.\u00a0 Not only was the matter moot, but there was no case or controversy, a virtual requirement for any court to hear a matter.<\/p>\n

Bob Camreta is a child protective services caseworker in central Oregon.\u00a0 He heard through the rumor mill that a father had been sexually abusing his daughter.\u00a0 Camreta, along with a county deputy sheriff, went to the elementary school where the 9-year-old girl was enrolled to interview her.\u00a0 She denied that her father was abusing her, but after persistent questioning from Camreta (the time is disputed, but the court determined it was 2 hours), she finally acquiesced.\u00a0 The interview occurred at the school without a warrant, probable cause, exigent circumstances, and without the permission of her parents.\u00a0 Her father was charged eventually, but the charges were dropped after a jury could not come to a verdict.\u00a0 Her mother filed suit against Camreta and the sheriff\u2019s deputy, James Alford.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court doesn\u2019t get into too many of the details because it focuses on the technical issues of precedent, whether the case is moot, and why it accepted it in the first place.\u00a0 But the point remains, what the Court did will have an effect on the control of parents over their children when the government decides to get involved.<\/p>\n

According to the background facts in the case below<\/a>, \u201cCamreta thought the school would be a good place for the interview because it is a place where children feel safe and would allow him \u2018to conduct the interview away from the potential influence of suspects, including parents.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 What didn\u2019t occur to Camreta is that when you remove children from a classroom the other students want to know why. It\u2019s embarrassing, it\u2019s noticeable, and it causes emotional turmoil without the added pressure of being interviewed for two hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cThroughout the interview Camreta was accompanied by Deputy Sheriff Alford.\u201d\u00a0 Alford never participated in the interview and remained silent throughout the entire two hours.\u00a0 His uniform included a visible firearm.\u00a0 You have to wonder why he was there.\u00a0 The facts in the case never reveal an answer to that question.\u00a0 It\u2019s bad enough to have your children interviewed by an unknown government representative who is asking questions about you as a parent, but to have a law enforcement officer present gives an added sense of danger, fear, and intimidation.\u00a0 It\u2019s evident in the remaining facts.<\/p>\n

\u201cUpon arriving at the school, Camreta told school officials that he and Alford were there to interview [the child] and requested use of a private office. Terry Friesen, a counselor at the elementary school, visited [the child] in her classroom and told the child that someone was there to talk with her. Friesen took [the girl] to the room where Camreta and Alford were waiting and left.\u201d\u00a0 Later, when telling her mother of the incident, the child \u201cstated that she was \u201cscared\u201d when Friesen left her with Camreta and Alford, although she did not ask to call home, did not ask to have Friesen or her parents with her, and did not cry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parents have a right to know about the qualifications of a teacher in a public school; they have a right to know about how a physician is treating their children; and they have a right to be informed by law enforcement if the child has allegedly committed a delinquent act.\u00a0 Surely, parents have the right to be notified that a government official is talking to your child \u2013 about YOU!\u00a0 But that\u2019s not the way it is, according to the recent decision.<\/p>\n

The federal district court granted summary judgment to Camreta and Alford as it pertained to the girl\u2019s Fourth Amendment claims (the mother sued on behalf of her child).\u00a0 The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court\u2019s summary judgment on the basis of the qualified immunity.\u00a0 Here comes the strange part. Camreta and Alford are the prevailing parties to this suit, yet they appealed the Circuit Court\u2019s decision to the United States Supreme Court.\u00a0 Stranger yet, the SCOTUS granted certiorari (a writ whereby the High Court accepts to hear a case from a court below).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unheard of for the winner in a lawsuit to appeal.\u00a0 However, it has happened, as the Court pointed out in two cases.\u00a0 But the successful parties who appealed in those two cases were appealing the judgments.\u00a0 As Justice Kennedy explained in his dissent, a party may have been asking for $1,000 in damages and received only $500.\u00a0 That can be appealed.\u00a0 But in this case, the prevailing party is appealing what is known as dicta.\u00a0 Dicta (the plural), or dictum, is not legally binding.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a writer\u2019s (judge or justice) reasoning or editorializing.\u00a0 Nonetheless, this is what got a few justices\u2019 ire up.<\/p>\n

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the SCOTUS agreed.\u00a0 So why did it have to hear the moot case to decide that it didn\u2019t like what the 9th<\/sup> Circuit did?\u00a0 It\u2019s not a case that is going to be plastered all over every daily newspaper in the county, but it\u2019s so strange that even the strange Justice Antonin Scalia concurred in the opinion of the majority by saying: \u201cI join the Court\u2019s opinion, which reasonably applies our precedents, strange though they may be.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its opinion, the 9th<\/sup> Circuit didn\u2019t stop at granting qualified immunity, it provided dictum that \u201cgovernment officials investigating allegations of child abuse should cease operating on the assumption that a \u201cspecial need\u201d automatically justifies dispensing with traditional Fourth Amendment protections\u201d as it did in this case.<\/p>\n

So, what does this mean?\u00a0 I\u2019m not an attorney, a law professor, or a government teacher, but I think it means that the Court wanted to take away the 9th<\/sup> Circuit\u2019s hand-slapping it did to government officials who try to push the envelope right up to the ledge of qualified immunity.\u00a0 Government officials can step over that edge, and they have.\u00a0 In this case they didn\u2019t.\u00a0 The United States Supreme Court wanted to make sure that the finger pointing was taken away.\u00a0 It\u2019s sort of like a judge saying \u201cthe jury will disregard that comment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Camreta will continue to improperly interview children.\u00a0 Alford no longer works for the DeShultes County Sheriff\u2019s Department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

it\u2019s so strange that even the strange Justice Antonin Scalia concurred in the opinion of the majority by saying: \u201cI join the Court\u2019s opinion, which reasonably applies our precedents, strange though they may be.\u201d Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,56],"tags":[238,235,234,62,239,236,237,212,230],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issues","category-privacy","tag-dicta","tag-fourteenth-amendment","tag-fourth-amendment","tag-justice-kennedy","tag-justice-scalia","tag-ninth-circuit-court-of-appeals","tag-parental-rights","tag-qualified-immunity","tag-united-states-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":580,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}