Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

The anonymous tip was two months old. But that didn’t stop a couple of Child Protective Service workers from calling in the police and threatening to take John and Tiffany Loudermilk’s children. Hear more on today’s Home School Heartbeat, with Jim Mason and Mike Farris.

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Jim Mason:
Mike, last time you told us how a two-month-old anonymous tip brought two CPS agents and several police officers to the home of John and Tiffany Loudermilk. When the Loudermilks refused to allow them in, CPS workers threatened to take their children into custody. The Loudermilks finally gave in to these demands. Mike, what happened next?

Mike Farris: Well Jim, they went in the house looked around for just a very brief time—four or five minutes—and determined that the anonymous tipster was all wrong, that the home was perfectly ok. And they came out and told the family “we are dismissing the charges, the case will be closed.”

When they had told the rest of the story of what had gone on, we decided to file a federal civil rights law suit against the social workers and police officers for violating the 4^th Amendment rights of the family. It’s pretty clear that we will protect our members in these kinds of situations. And we had done this before in federal court in California on numerous occasions—including one that had protected a family all the way to the 9^th Circuit, the Calibreta case, that we believe clearly established the law that the family had the right to refuse to let the social workers into their house. And that these kind of coercive tactics were not a proper way to administer a search under the 4^th Amendment.

Jim:
Mike, thank you. Next time we’ll find out what happened with this important case to protect this family’s constitutional right to be secure in their home from unreasonable searches and seizures. For Home School Heartbeat, I’m Jim Mason.