[Fwd: Texas Supreme Court clarified child protection laws, but SB1440 undermines them]

[Guest guest]

http://governor.state.tx.us/contact/ <--here is the online contact

also.

Folks, where ever your

located this Texas bill SB1440 has to do with you. You can call the

Governor at 1-800-252-9600 from within the state

of

Texas. If your in Austin area or you are out-of-state you can call this

number (512) 463-1782 to voice

your opinion.

This is the best explanation I have read on what this bill

does and if

it passes in Texas it could come to your state next.

http://www.star-telegram.com/opinions/story/1442262.html

Wexler: Texas Supreme Court clarified child protection laws, but

SB1440 undermines them

By RICHARD WEXLER

Special to the Star-Telegram

Former Judge McCown claimed in his June 15 column that Senate

Bill 1440, awaiting signature or veto by Gov. Rick , merely

"clarifies" when Child Protective Services workers can enter a home,

interrogate young children, strip-search those children looking for

bruises and remove those children from the home, all without giving the

family a chance to tell its side of the story to a judge first.

In

fact, the clarifying was done a year ago by the Texas Supreme Court

when it ruled that CPS broke the law when it tore more than 400

children from their families, who were members of the Fundamentalist

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

What the court said,

in effect, is that the power to do all that to a child on a judge’s

say-so, without even a hearing, is an emergency power, to be used only

if the risk to the child is so immediate that there is no alternative

but to burst through the door first and ask questions later. Indeed, if

a child truly is at imminent risk of harm, authorities can go in with

no order at all — and, contrary to McCown’s claim, they can do that on

any day of the week, even Sunday.

As a practical matter, since no

judge wants to look soft on child abuse, CPS could get orders whenever

it wanted, regardless of whether it was a real emergency. Indeed, CPS

says the way it behaved in the FLDS case is how it behaves in every

case.

But, because the FLDS case was so huge, the issue got

unusual scrutiny — and the families got high-quality legal help not

available to most of the overwhelmingly poor families caught in the CPS

net. So the issue reached the Supreme Court, which reminded CPS of what

the law actually requires.

The real purpose of SB 1440 is to undermine that ruling.

The

new law allows judges to grant these orders even when there is no

immediate danger — as in the FLDS case, where CPS alleged that infants

and toddlers faced the risk of abuse after they reached puberty. CPS

need simply claim that its needs the order to help in the investigation

and there is a "fair probability" that the allegations are true.

This

is a lower threshold than anything needed to get a search warrant in a

criminal case. If anything, in child welfare cases, the threshold

should be higher.

If the police mistake your neighbor for a drug

dealer, the neighbor no doubt will be traumatized, but at least he’s an

adult. If CPS, based on no more than an anonymous call, bursts through

the door of your neighbor’s house because case workers think he’s a

child abuser, it’s innocent children who suffer.

It is children

who will face traumatic questioning. It is children at risk of being

strip-searched by strangers looking for bruises. And it is children who

risk being torn from everyone they know and love and thrown into the

chaos of foster care — where at least one in four is likely to be

abused. The younger the child, the greater the harm.

One need

only recall the hideous conditions the FLDS children endured during the

first days after the raid, and the searing statements from the state’s

own therapists concerning the harm this internment was doing to the

children to understand why it is so urgent that children be protected

from this unchecked power.

Isn’t it time for advocates of "children’s rights" to include their

right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure?

Wexler is executive director of the

National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. www.nccpr.org