Yes, this statement may be a bit far reaching in asserting that civil rights in this country are deteriorating but it is not farfetched:
SCOTUS Child Support Right to Legal Counsel Opinion
Instead of overusing the term "poor" which seems to have negative connotations today, I will give a broader term of "economically disadvantaged". In essence, SCOTUS has laid down the law of the land to say non-custodial parents, mainly fathers, should be imprisoned for being broke.
Basically, here is how it typically plays out:
A mother is normally awarded physical and legal custody of the child for whatever reason. The father now must maintain a household for himself and the basic shelter expenses for the child, which is child support.
Now, when there are a loss of jobs and other economic factors such as mortgage fraud, property foreclosures, property tax foreclosures, unaffordable health insurance, denial of health insurance, etc., the custodial parent may be forced to apply for social assistance. When this happens, the non-custodial parent, normally the father, is billed for the social services the mother has applied. If the mother is unemployed or even employed at poverty level wages forcing her to supplement her wages and resort to social assistance such as Medicaid and Food Assistance to ensure she can provide for the necessary needs of the child and to prevent child protective services intervention.
While the state is being reimbursed through federal block grants for the provided assistance, it is also billing the father, or what I prefer to call "double-dipping". This is when the state will collect federal funding for the social assistance given to the mother and child, then put it on the child support tab of the father while collecting Title IV-D funding at a rate of 4:1 for every dollar collected from the father, while never reimbursing the feds for the social assistance funds.
Then, as receiving social assistance becomes a multiplier for the child support tab of the father and the child support ruling is a civil action, the Bradley Amendment kicks in. It is at this point arrearages of the child support accrue interest making the outstanding bill of child support skyrocket.
Since child support cases under Title IV-D are classified as entitlements of Social Security, States have financial incentives to pursue outstanding balances no matter the financial condition of the father.
To better understand, consider when the father is in the same economically vulnerable position as the mother and child who rely upon social assistance. The father, even though he is unemployed and impoverished, legally eligible for social assistance, the courts will assess child support on "what he can and should be earning."
When the unemployed father, or a father who is working at or 150% above the federal poverty level, even though he is unable to pay his own rent and buy food, he must pay child support, even if the mother is not on assistance and at a significant higher level of social economic status.
The court will issue a show cause to ask why the father is not paying child support and, without instant payment to the court, throw the father in jail. When a father is in jail, there is no income being generated and a likelihood that he will loose his job for not showing up and loosing his housing for nonpayment of rent.
The jails have the ability to charge the fathers for their time of stay, further increasing the outstanding balance of child support. These locally jailed fathers are classified as "non-violent" offenders.
Once the father is released, he will have challenges obtaining gainful employment because he now possesses a jail record. With the inability to pay child support, the cycle begins again and he goes right back to debtor's prison, with the blessings of SCOTUS, because he is not allowed legal representation because he is poor.
Poverty is the civil crime of child abuse. Welcome to the dismantling of civil rights.
Court Issues Split Ruling on Poor’s Right to Counsel
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday gave a complicated answer to the simple question of whether poor people facing jail time for failing to pay child support are entitled to court-appointed lawyers.
In a 5-to-4 decision that divided along ideological lines, the court said there is no automatic right to counsel for people charged with civil contempt, at least when the parent seeking to collect child support does not have a lawyer. In those circumstances, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote for the majority, states must use “substantial procedural safeguards.”
In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said the answer to the simple question the court had agreed to decide is that there is no constitutional right to counsel for people facing jail for civil contempt. He also objected to the court’s decision to fashion safeguards based on suggestions from the federal government, which was not a party to the case.
In a series of decisions starting with Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963, the Supreme Court has held that poor people facing the loss of liberty for crimes must be provided with lawyers. But those decisions were rooted in the Sixth Amendment, which concerns only criminal proceedings.
Civil contempt is meant to coerce rather than punish, and judges often say that people held in such circumstances hold the keys to their own jail cells.
The case decided Monday involved a South Carolina man, Michael D. Turner, who was repeatedly held in civil contempt and jailed for as much as a year at a time for not paying child support.
Mr. Turner argued that he was too poor to pay what he owed and that a lawyer could have helped him convince the judge that jailing him was impermissible.
Justice Breyer’s majority opinion was sympathetic to people like Mr. Turner who face jail without lawyers and yet wary of “an asymmetry of representation” when the custodial parent seeking child support has no lawyer.
In those circumstances, Justice Breyer wrote, states should at least provide notice to defendants that ability to pay is a critical issue in the case, use a form or something similar to elicit information on that point, give defendants a chance to be heard in court and require judges specifically to determine whether the defendant can pay but refuses.
Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the majority opinion in the case, Turner v. Rogers, No. 10-10. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined all or substantial parts of Justice Thomas’s dissent.
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