Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

If it’s your home, you decide who can come in. How that 4^th Amendment freedom applies to social services investigations sparked by anonymous tips is at the heart of a current HSLDA court case. Jim Mason and Mike Farris have more, today on Home School Heartbeat.

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Jim Mason:
Today Mike Farris, Chairman of HSLDA, is with me talking about an important 4^th Amendment case that HSLDA is working on. In this case, CPS workers and police threatened to immediately remove the Loudermilk’s children if they wouldn’t allow entry into their home. Mike, we argued that was coercion. How did the various courts respond?

Mike Farris:
Well, the trial court agreed with us, that this was, according to the facts that we had raised, a case of coercion that would not be free and voluntary consent and was sending the matter on for a final trial before a jury. The police officers did an inner room appeal to the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals and the 9^th Circuit is…the 9^th Circuit. And they ruled that the police officers were within their rights to order this family to consent or lose their children.

That was an outlandish decision as far as I was concerned, and we have appealed this now to the Supreme Court of the United States and we are currently waiting for the Supreme Court to tell us whether they are going to hear our appeal.

Jim:
This is a real important case with far-reaching ramifications. Next time, we’ll explain some of those ramifications for our listeners. For Home School Heartbeat, I’m Jim Mason.