and they're well they're also used they're also used to get information to reject the documents and tell the taxpayers they owe more money and to reject claims that person says i make eighteen thousand a year to get the confirming information and if the information can be provided and confirmed without a walk through the heart without searching the home and that's provided san diego's project one hundred percent has none of those know i did you know interest that's being served there but it's you know it's investigative i mean you walk in and you see the five thousand dollar widescreen t v and the person says oh i have all this trouble supporting my children because i don't have a man to help me in the house and there's obviously a man to help her and a house that's seeing if the charities go more exposed to go if you walk in and see the five thousand dollar widescreen t v because you're there you know here we've got a law enforcement initiative you know it's on the agenda and minutes of the county board of county supervisors as the district attorney's initiative against one it's exclusively law enforcement and it's and justice blackman's decision if the visitations to discourage misrepresentation or fraud such a byproduct of that visit does not impress upon the visit itself the dominant criminal investigative that's back and why when you've got minimal invasions no snooping in the home during a home is forbidden by the new york regulations you've got the same kind of situation a los angeles county where privacy is respected and they don't go and walk in the closet not like the home visit in wyoming he still thinks it's a good law but he thinks it may be constrained to what i'm looking for from you as if we were to agree with you what would be the level of intrusion make me comfortable with this it's been an issue in alaska case workers in alaska as i recall were walking and i can't remember if they got a first statute to classify them as peace officers and enable them to carry concealed weapons before we had a law that let all of us carry concealed weapons without a permit and as i recall prosecutors i don't i can't remember if prosecutors were classified as peace officers not that kind of a case you know it's not a case like los angeles where you got the case workers going there with the dual purposes and it also was violated california regulations which say mass for indiscriminate keep coming back to you mentioned that there are investigators let's assume that somebody can go in the door to accomplish the objectives that weinman lays out as permissible what else are you saying that the person in the door can or can't do the person in the door who is there to verify that the applicant lives there and that the applicant is qualified can can take that into account and do something with it but is that the point does it in fact line but then if they ask to go into the bedroom or they asked to go places they seem like pretty obvious places to find absolute things number one do the people who claim to be part of this household actually live there and number two people who are supposedly not part of this please the court thomas ponson senior deputy county council on behalf of the county of san diego and other county parties here let me just address some of the arguments that have been made here the purpose of the county's home visit program is not to investigate for fraud or to criminally prosecute individuals who have submitted information that turns out later not to be correct the purpose of the county's project one hundred percent home visit program is to make sure that eligible people are the ones who are listed three just by police now what i'm saying i'm saying here that that may be the byproduct of what's happening here that may happen along or we may not but it's not the main purpose the main purpose here is to determine eligibility for  were you agree that what is that if you're goes beyond anything that was good physically done in the army i'm saying there are some distinctions between this case and why man i think when you look at the totality of the circumstances  officers and that they were not uniformed authority here the same thing applies to these individuals while they may be investigators employed by the district attorney are not police officers they're not in uniform to address your the district attorney attorney specifically said they cannot be armed and has turned down our request that they be armed that's a tab eighty one exhibit ten on the excerpts of record so they really have none of the trappings of the traditional police is your honor i have not looked at those regulations i do not know what justice blackmun said when he referred to snooping to i've always thought that when people go to somebody's house for a party and they look in the medicine cabinet there's snoopy tell me i'm something on s your honor i could i would certainly be willing to go back and look at the regulations and brief the court with respect to that if there are no you at this point but i do not know at this point my sanction it is the same that with respect to snooping that it means something on the court here from trying to find out if a man lives in a house where according to the paperwork he doesn't live and i find four pairs of men's under clothes and the dirty laundry i'm thinking hey if i just testimony that cited involves a situation where the investigator wants to make a determination that the eligible child actually lives in the home and according to the deposition testimony moving along he she would ask the applicant could you please show me something that belongs to the child and under those circumstances the applicant went to the dirty laundry because none of the child's had clothes happened to be clean at the time perfectly understandable once in the laundry pulled out the piece of policy and said here here's something for the child that belongs to the child the investigator said that's fine i'm not so again i don't think that snooping and i think there's been an attempt here to sensationalize the facts beyond what they are both so the way it works is the investigator doesn't look in the hamper to see if it support the people that are supposed to be there he says you show me some reason to think that these four kids with fear and then the woman goes to the hamper and she shows them the dirty clothes that's the exact deposition testimony regarding the laundry issue and that there was no snooping in  dirty laundry that's correct that's the only other things there is regarding laundry and the factors here is that about going into the bathroom and opening the medicine i think there's some evidence well there's no evidence that the d n a investigators themselves open the medicine no evidence that if they turn down a specific request to view an item that it's not if they decline entirely to home visit and they refuse then it will be denied but there's no evidence in the record and i don't believe it's the case that if they refuse specific permission to look at you know a closet or a drawer or medicine cabinet that the application will be denied under those circumstances so the record we have the news that there is are home visits by da investigators purpose primary purpose is to investigate and to verify that the person is qualified with the money and the charitable money is being spent for appropriate purposes but that anything that goes beyond was in plain view beyond where that person is sitting talking to the applicant and that if the applicant refuses at that point there's no adverse consequence that's correct that's the evidence and the record if the  opening of closet doors are they would have to allow or walk through they would have to walk the walk through of the home but again not necessarily allow the specifics of you know looking at this particular clothing or this particular medicine cabinet this automatically means that she's taking care of her elderly mother who has high blood pressure and she might be able to help herself by saying look in a medicine cabinet you'll see your high blood pressure medicine that yes to take every morning yes automatically it would not result in the diet for instance if the if the investigators gone through the house and there's absolutely no evidence that the child is the person who is receiving the benefits actually lives there and the applicant then refuses to provide any additional information such as allowing the closet door to be to see if the child clothing is in the is in the closet then there may be a denial because it may be that all the information that is been obtained will show that there was actually no evidence that the child they're going to happen two that would make the determination you know non eligibility that's correct investigators do not make eligibility determinations this oral argument is interesting it's changing my view of what's going on if i understand it right and that's a big if it's a understand it the way it works is it's not that the investigator says let me look in a closet let me work in a dirty laundry i mean look in the medicine cabinet see if what you are saying is true instead investigator may walk in and say wow sure there may be some distinction but what i was referring to is specifically the laundry example and the only evidence of anybody looking through anything in the laundry was where the investigator indicated that they had asked this i think that's true in some cases and then it's up to her hope not and if she doesn't open it then it will be so noted in the report i think it would be noted but it's not an automatic denial of eight under the circumstances here and so i think th counties program well i agree with such pressure all the factors are not there the vast majority of these ten factors are here in one of the cases that have been examined the smith case examined by the state intermediate court here in california in the of the factors are are present including the most important ones being that the purpose here is not criminal investigation it's within the special needs analysis because as the supreme court noted in graf and noted in james this is a circumstances beyond  been some sort of criminal activity let me tell you the problem i have rebuild on why me and with has been overtaken by carlo which and other cases and then we get to the special needs to sort of maybe the modern interior of the house and what we have going on here is an invasion if you will by outsiders into the interior of the house he wrote when it was simply the scanning heat emitted from the interior of the house so it's a little hard to ignore the rhetoric on the right i don't belittle it i mean it's very sincere on his part in the majority of the drawing to about the sanctity of the fourth amendment in the privacy of the interior of the house what happens when we look at when i look at why am i consider this case to be clear extension of law i mean going well beyond what justice blackmun back in one nine hundred seventy one in the majority reduced expectation of privacy and say well well for applicants per weimann they're on the same level as convicted felons and therefore if you want welfare benefits you better be prepared to open up the needs being for the purpose of entry into the home there in his dissent in that particular case the district court in this case said that there is a reduced expectation of privacy by welfare beneficiaries didn't say that there wasn't any privacy and he didn't say that they weren't to be treated like criminals as the plaintiffs suggest he was just saying because of all the information that they're required to provide in order to obtain benefits and because a condition of eligibility is that they must actually live in the residence and the child must live in the residence that it's reasonable for them to expect that there's a home visit that occurs again with respect to wyman in some respects this is less intrusive than wyman because there was if i could finish i see my time's up here with respect to the why my home visit the person was already receiving benefits and the wiman case authorize continuing home values it's for the purposes of making sure that the beneficiary was still eligible here we're only talking about a home visit at the commencement one home visit not multiple home visits and so in some respects the intrusion is actually the last here and in the wyoming case where it was multiple visits over a period of time to confirm continued  of the fourth amendment and i don't think those cogent region reasons are present here and as we indicated in our brief that we don't believe that the parish decision factually bears any resemblance to this and it's clear when reading the decision that it was decided under the fourth amendment and not under the search and seizure or the privacy clauses of the california constitution and so therefore it is clearly distinguishable and actually not precedent on the issue of the california constitutional cl thank you my just going with counsel help me on something is there so many cases that are being discussed i want to make sure i keep them straight if i remember right and why men the courts said it's ok for the caseworkers to go into the house in  the supreme court said it's ok for the probation officers to go into the house in carlow the supreme court's a it's not ok to do the infrared scan of the house but that was plainly for criminal purposes and respect i think that wyman and subsequent i think in cairo it would be analogous to this case if the poc rowers were asking the government per subsidy for people to help with their energy bills because they were using a whole lot think of the state of alaska showed up on your doorstep and said that gives us a right to walk to your home or your benefits are going to be revoked that you say no that's not reasonable i don't know i don't i don't know their case has not come up with they do check on whether you're really a resident make people do have an incentive to lie about absolutely your honor and there are a lot of ways to check on things like that they don't have to be as invasive as project one hundred percent with the special needs you have to balance the reasonable expectations of priva most intimate spaces with the home with the need and here was a manufactured one that referrals for need based investigation were falling dramatically when the county district attorney he said i want to have is the only county in california fifty eight counties that has a program like this nobody else thinks they need a program like this was nationalised as a crime grammar caseworkers to go to the home but i think that's materially different