A Significant Court Decision That Could Positively Effect Homeshoolers

In reading this press release note that here in California, legal homeschools are effectively considered to be private schools.

The [7th Circuit Court of Appeals] held that social workers violated the Fourth Amendment when they force their way into a private school, Greendale Baptist Academy, to interview students in a child abuse investigation involving no emergency. The court also held that the social workers violated the rights of parents when they threatened to remove the children from the home when they “had no reason whatsoever to suspect that Mr. and Mrs. Doe were abusing their children.”

The case arose when social workers, acting on stale information several months old, forced their way into a private Christian school without a warrant, over the objections of the school principal, seized a 10 year old boy with police assistance, and interviewed him about the school’s policy of administering a “swat” as discipline in certain cases. Parents of the students had given written approval of the disciplinary policy.