"The child is not the mere creature of the state." -- United States Supreme Court, Pierce v. Society of Sisters
On March 1, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Alford v. Greene, the first major case involving Child Protective Services to go before the United States Supreme Court in 21 years and one of the most important parents' rights cases ever to reach the Court.
If it goes the right way--i.e., to bolster parents' rights--it will mean that state agents will have to obtain a court order in order to question a child at school. If it goes the wrong way, which the Obama administration is advocating for, along with 40 state attorneys general, law enforcement agencies, social workers, prosecutors and defense attorneys, it will be a serious blow to parental rights as well as the rights of children in the public schools. And then there's the possibility that the Court will either vacate the lower court opinion, leaving the police and other government agents free to question students at will, or sidestep the issue altogether and simply choose not to rule on it, declaring it moot because the young girl involved is no longer a child.
Yet this is not an issue that is going to go away. Indeed, Alford v. Greene could have far-reaching implications for the rights of parents and students across the nation. And while the particulars of the case are egregious, they pale in comparison to the government's effrontery in insisting that parents essentially forfeit their rights when they send their children to a public school.
In February 2003, an armed, uniformed county sheriff and an Oregon Department of Human Services caseworker directed school officials at an elementary school to summon a 9-year-old girl (referred to in the court documents as S.G.) for questioning. Despite the absence of a court order or the involvement of a judge, school officials called S.G. out of her class, took her to an empty conference room, and left her alone with the sheriff, James Alford, and the social services investigator, Bob Camreta. Then, without notifying S.G.'s mother and in the absence of anyone who might otherwise have looked out for the little girl's best interests, these two men proceeded to question her for two hours.
During the course of the interrogation, Camreta, the social worker, peppered S.G. with questions about whether her father had ever abused her or her little sister. According to S.G.'s attorneys, when Camreta asked the 9-year-old if her father touched her "all over [her] body," she said "yes," referring to affectionate hugs, kisses and piggy-back rides. Camreta then asked "over and over again" if "some of those were bad touches." Over and over again, the little girl said "no."
Obviously intimidated by the two men, one of whom was wearing a gun clearly visible to the little girl, S.G. was too frightened even to ask for a glass of water or tell the men that she felt ill. At no time was she told that she could refuse to answer their questions or that she was free to leave the room on her own volition. (Incredibly, the Obama administration in their Supreme Court brief chalks up such interrogations to being "at most a minor intrusion on the liberty of a child whose freedom of movement is already considerably restricted by virtue of her presence at school.")
As the interrogation dragged on, 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.
In 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of S.G., declaring that the government had violated her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. However, in appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, the government is arguing that S.G.'s mere presence at school was sufficient to justify law enforcement officers seizing and interrogating her without her mother's knowledge or consent--a position supported by the Obama administration which, if upheld, will further undermine the rights of parents of public school students.
If Alford v. Greene were only about one family's heart-wrenching ordeal, it would be bad enough. But it's indicative of a more draconian mindset at work in the government, one that sees public school students as wards of the state, to do with as they will, in defiance of the children's constitutional rights and those of their parents. This is far from the first time that government officials have usurped the rights of parents and arrogated authority and power over young people in the public schools. Hence, in recent years, students have found themselves subjected to invasive questioning and mass searches of their persons and property--often without their parents' knowledge or consent.
Unfortunately, this effort to usurp parental authority and turn schools into virtual police states flies in the face of the Supreme Court's 1968 admonition in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District that "neither teachers nor students shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate." As attorney Tony LaCroix points out in "Student Drug Testing: The Blinding Appeal of In Loco Parentis and the Importance of State Protection of Student Privacy": "The states, through a combination of compulsory attendance laws and in loco parentis-inspired policies, have 'bootstrapped' themselves into possessing a right to infringe on the personal liberties of students in a manner similar to a parent." Moreover, as professor Susan Stuart recognizes in her article "In Loco Parentis in the Public Schools: Abused, Confused and in Need of Change": "The consequences for students have been enormous, from increasing restrictions on student speech to loosening restrictions on how schools can conduct student searches. Schools have been given license to reach the outer boundaries of control by courts' countenancing institutional and official behavior that is farther and farther from the reaches of professional conduct."
Yet the harm caused by attitudes and policies that treat public school students as state vassals is not merely a short-term deprivation of individual rights. It also is a long-term inculcation of attitudes among our youth that civil liberties are luxuries that may be discarded at the whim and caprice of government officials if they deem doing so is for the so-called "greater good." Rather than molding our young people into compliant citizens, the schools should be educating them for citizenship and in the scrupulous protection of our constitutional rights. Otherwise, as the Supreme Court has held, we "will strangle the free mind at its source and teach our youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes."
The public's desire to stop and prevent child abuse cannot be gainsaid, but the government interest in investigating criminal activity has never been deemed sufficient to override fundamental rights such as the right to bodily freedom. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis opined in one of his dissenting opinions in 1928, "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent....The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
If the Bill of Rights stands for anything, it is that we are to be treated like human beings, with dignity and great caution, not suspects in a police lineup. Unfortunately, as Alford v. Greene makes clear, we now find ourselves in situations where we are guilty until proven innocent and, thus, suspects in a police state. It is a state in which everything we say and do is subject to scrutiny by the police and other agents of the state -- and nothing we say or do will make any difference.
Follow John W. Whitehead on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rutherford_inst
Glenn D. Braunstein, M.D.: Sideline Rage: Fighting Over Child's Play
Parentalrights.org - Protecting Children by Empowering Parents
My 10 years of age daughter attends a school whereas the administrators and teachers infringed upon her rights, as well as our rights as parents. It was prohibited for me to support her before or after an interrogation by DCF (STATE Agency) and the school police. The teacher who inflicted the emotional abuse upon her and allowed her peers to tease and bully her was not interrogated.
The students who repettively called her ignorant, weird, stupid, V(her name)-Germ, and made derogative statements aboout her hair and skin were not interrogated. She was labelled: lazy, thumb-sucker, drama queen, needed medication to function, attention-seeker, etc... .
The Assistant Principal made her apologize verbally and in writing, wrote a referral and called us, when she touched another student who did not cry or report her for doing so. When the teachers were confronted about any incident, logical reasons were provided. The principal literally acted out how he thought she behaved in the cafeteria for attention and approached her after lunch about it, when she actually dodged the food that was thrown at her. When he did not allow her to explain the incident she hysterically cried. He failed to inform us of that incident prior to a meeting, but made a point of it at a meet.
Decisions about our daughter's academic stability and well being were made without our regards or awareness. As of today, she does not speak with any adult alone.
Luckily, though, they gave up after two hours.
There are times when children need the protection of knowing that they can talk to police without their parents being called. I've taught kids who were being abused, physically, mentally, and sexually by their parents. When they finally got to a point where they could tell, bringing in a parent to be present during the interview would totally shut them down.
I've also seen administrators act like the most vicious bullies on the playground with some kids, as well as law enforcement officers. In my experience these people are the exception, not the rule.
There has to be a balance between kids' rights and parental rights here.
A balance is right--the question remains, what is the proper balance?
You are right again. As an appointed Guardian for abused and neglected children, I know this is so because when some children are abused at home they have a tendcy to act like they are treated at home outside of home. And it is believed that school official treats abused children the way they act in school.
A warrant should be required here. That was the position I took after reading the question presented, and where I still stand. They had time to get a warrant (Camreta waited three days between receiving the info and acting - negating the exigent circumstances exception).
The most compelling argument in my mind for Alford (please, anyone, chime in on this one) is the "special needs" exception outlined in the concurrence of T.L.O. and subsequently used in majority opinions. The Ferguson case (police getting hospitals to gather drug use evidence from pregnant women to use against the women) was an unconstitutional use of special needs because of the entanglement with law enforcement purposes. The hospital was acting at the behest of the police. However, in Verona v. Achton and Pottawatomie County v. Earls, evidence gathered from students participating in after school activities to determine if they were using drugs was considered a special need, thus negating the warrant requirement. This was true even though the evidence could be turned over to the police.
My question is (and I'm playing devil's advocate here, I believe S.G. should win), could special needs apply because child services were working on their own authority for the special needs of protecting children, even if they can ultimately turn that info over to the police? And does it matter that it happened at school, where students have lesser Fourth Amendment rights?
The solution is teaching kids exactly what there rights are. It's important to stress to them that nothing they say to the police/government/principals will be used to help them in the event of a prosecution (the phrase is "anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law," not "anything you say can and will be used either against or for you in a court of law" for a reason). Since your child's school will almost never tell them that it will likely be in their best interests to avoid talking when they are being interrogated, I'd recommend having them watch this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik
Will any statements be entered in evidence only in a trial in which the child is treated as an adult in court?
Slippery slope here.
Miranda only applies to people who are arrested. She was not arrested. There is a difference between a seizure and an arrest.
I now call the schools a pre-prison program. You get a cop for $27,000 a year and the $125,000 principal can sit doing nothing. Parents don't understand that some of the worst bullies are paid employees. She went from a happy helpful child to a straight e student for 2 years afterward. I would home school if I had it to do over again just because of this one life changing event. You bring it up now, 8 years later and we both will start to cry automatically.
I would like to hear other parents stories.
If the advanced students are getting anything extra, your school district is lucky. In my town, those kids get nothing but boredom and the same worksheets as everyone else. They're passing the test, you see.