Opinion ID: 781963
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment claims (Counts 1 and 3)

Text: 54 Our jurisprudence has long recognized that a person's privacy interest is at its highest in a person's home. In terms that apply equally to seizures of property and to seizures of persons, the Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house. Absent exigent circumstances, that threshold may not reasonably be crossed without a warrant. Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 590, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980); see also United States v. U.S. District Court, 407 U.S. 297, 313, 92 S.Ct. 2125, 32 L.Ed.2d 752 (1972) ([P]hysical entry into the home is the chief evil against which the... Fourth Amendment is directed....). Searches conducted without a warrant are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (footnotes omitted). This insistence upon interposing a neutral and detached magistrate between the state and the citizenry, subject to only a few exceptions justified by exceptional circumstances, Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948), has become a cardinal principle of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 390, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978). 17 Further, the only situation in which the Supreme Court has extended the special needs doctrine to an individual's home occurred in Griffin, where the defendant was a probationer. See 483 U.S. 868, 107 S.Ct. 3164, 97 L.Ed.2d 709 (1987); cf. Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 540, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967) (holding that a warrant was needed to perform an administrative search upon private property). Consistent with these principles, in Franz v. Lytle, we held that police officers could not enter a house to investigate potential child abuse without a warrant. 997 F.2d 784, 791-92 (10th Cir.1993); cf. Calabretta v. Floyd, 189 F.3d 808, 817 (9th Cir. 1999) (denying qualified immunity on similar facts); Good v. Dauphin County Social Servs., 891 F.2d 1087, 1094 (3d Cir.1989) (same). 55 On the other hand, we have made certain statements, albeit in dicta, that could be construed as drawing distinctions between (1) child-abuse investigations and other types of investigations and (2) social workers and law-enforcement officers. 18 For example, in Snell v. Tunnell, in the context of a warrantless search of a house during a child-abuse investigation, we stated: [W]e do not have occasion to decide whether a search of a private home without a warrant or probable cause violates the fourth amendment. Courts have reached differing results concerning the difficult issue of the scope of the fourth amendment protection in the context of a child abuse investigation. 19 920 F.2d 673, 697 (10th Cir.1990) (citations omitted). Further, in Franz, we suggested that the Fourth Amendment's strictures might apply differently to social workers: 56 [A] social worker's principal focus is the welfare of the child. While a criminal prosecution may emanate from the social worker's activity, that prospect is not a part of the social worker's cachet. This distinction of focus justifies a more liberal view of the amount of probable cause that would support an administrative search. 57 997 F.2d at 791. 20 Taken together, Franz and Snell injected a degree of uncertainty into an otherwise staple rule of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: absent exigent circumstances, the state may not enter an individual's home without a warrant. 21 Payton, 445 U.S. at 590, 100 S.Ct. 1371. In other words, in light of these cases, the constitutional question [regarding the warrant requirement] presented by this case is by no means open and shut. 22 Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 615, 119 S.Ct. 1692, 143 L.Ed.2d 818 (1999). 58 Nevertheless, we cannot say that, in light of these cases, a reasonable state actor could conclude that the Fourth Amendment allowed a warrantless home entry and seizure of a child absent something approaching probable cause 23 to believe that: (1) the child's health or safety was at risk, 24 and (2) this risk was due to the child's presence in the home. In this case, however, the district court specifically concluded that: 59 [A]n objective, reasonable state social worker could have reasonably believed, based on the information the DCFS defendants possessed at the time of removal, that there was substantial cause to believe that there was a substantial danger to Rusty's health or safety and that Rusty's health or safety could not be protected without removing him from his parents' custody. 60 Dist. Ct. Order at 20 (emphasis added). The district court went on to conclude that there was substantial cause to believe that Rusty's presence in his own home was the reason for his particularly troubling and persistent condition of being restrained to a wheelchair and having to be fed through an intravenous tube even though he was not physically handicapped. Dist. Ct. Order at 21 (emphasis added). The record in this case supports the district court's findings. 25 Accordingly, based on these findings, we hold that defendants' warrantless entry and seizure did not violate clearly established law under the Fourth Amendment as it stood on May 28, 1999. 61