Why We Fight

1. The 4th Amendment.

Suppose a police officer wants to investigate a house because he believes that there is a meth lab there. Now suppose that the information upon which he relies is not sufficient for a judge to issue a warrant.

What happens, in light of the 4th Amendment?

Now suppose that the same police officer goes to DCF with the same information, only this time he or she adds the fact that there may be a child in the home.

What happens? Does the 4th Amendment disappear into thin air?

I challenge you dependency defense attorneys, particularly in Florida, to give me a good response to that question.

With that introduction, I direct your attention to this article: "Mom threatened with jail for teaching kids at home". This comes on the heels of schools threating jail for parents who do not precisely follow recommended vaccinations. I recognize that many readers won't cotton to the point of view of a WorldNetDaily article, and that's fine. The indisputable fact remains that child protection laws are, in fact, being used to threaten with prison those parents who do not behave in the very narrow approved ways approved of by their respective state governments.

Here's my point after mentioning the three topics above: Chapter 39 is powerful. There are criminal implications -- serious ones -- for obstructing a DCF investigation, which by definition requires entry without warrant into one's home and interviews without benefit of counsel with both parents and children.

Now, the fact that I represent parents in dependency cases does not mean that I don't take child abuse seriously. I do, and the people who know me in this business who work for DCF and its agents will be the first to tell you so.

I just wonder aloud, if you will allow me, what we're doing right now. Florida has already gutted dependency cases of its most experienced and passionate defense advocates. That has already happened. There is no sign that the Regional Counsels have any opinions about the power of Chapter 39 other than to argue that some counties disobey the law to the extent that they don't appoint defense attorneys at shelter hearings, therefore the rest of the counties ought not have any expectation that the new Regional Counsels will do so for anyone.

Let me be clear: I do not think that there is any kind of grand conspiracy to effect an extraordinary governmental power grab over what would otherwise by private behavior by families. On the other hand, I do think that we've created a perfect storm:

The Regional Counsel system will in the first place shove aside those who have become expert in defending in dependency cases. That's already happened. It will replace those defenders with attorneys who are not expected to present a defense at shelter hearings, thus leaving parents and their kids with no voice for literally months after a simple anonymous allegation that must be taken at face value in the absence of an initial defense. That is happening. Then the new system will provide these families with defenders who are, at best "part time" and who are at worst unprepared to handle the volume of cases in dependency court, at (eventually, as one elected public defender told me) more than the cost of the previous system of paying private attorneys a nominal hourly rate.

What does that mean for us, in light of the enormous power of Chapter 39? It means less people invested in checking the power of government. I've often said that I know personally and respect, and in fact like, most of the attorneys for DCF. I like their investigators and social workers, with some notable exceptions. Having said that, what is the public interest served by allowing DCF and its agents to get used to operating with no check, no balance, and no one worth preparing to face in court at the most critical moment: the shelter hearing itself.

Pardon my rant, but if just one of the five Regional Counsels had ever responded to my numerous inquiries about their philosophy of dependency defense and approach to shelter hearings, I'd feel better.

Chapter 39 is powerful. Since we've already lost the institutional knowledge of those who used to do this defense work, by and large, it is reasonable to ask about the quality of what will replace it.