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Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Can State Contractors Lie With Consitutional Immunity?

Well, of course, my darlings!

This is an interesting case coming out of Washington.

"I was just doing what I
was hired to do."
In a nutshell, the question before the Court of Appeals is whether a state contracted agency, which knew its social workers were generating false reports to the courts, recommending extended lengths of stay in foster care and/or termination of parental rights in child welfare cases, mainly due to poverty, is a grant, wait, get this, "constitutional guarantee" of immunity.

Seriously.

See, under the good ol' 11th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, States are granted soverign immunity and the only way to strip immunity is to demonstrate a breach of good faith, a malafide scienter.

So, the arguments are going the route of the principal-agent way, saying that they were just lil ol' state actors, just doing their jobs of maximizing revenue for the state.

In Michigan, there is law, already on the books, called the "Cotton Rule" which is applied to the decisions of the Superintendent of the Michigan Children's Institute.

In short, the rule states that you can challenge the decision of the Superintendent to grant consent or withhold consent to adoption, not on the grounds if the decision is right or wrong (whether he lied or was just incompetent, for which I support the latter), but if the decision was arbitrary and capricious, meaning, one must prove the decision was "whimsical".

Seriously.


"Can social workers lie in court to take away children and have immunity.? This is a clip from the 9th Federal Court district...Washington State social worker standards will be guided by the outcome of this decision. This is a nail biter." said Kathlee Arthur
For me, this case just got a bit more interesting under the recent veto override of JASTA which, in essence, stripped sovereign immunity.

Will JASTA have more fallout implications by opening doors for the people to sue The States in child welfare actions such as human trafficking and/or fraudulent termination of parental rights?

When a kid is Legally Kidnapped, it is considered, to the entire family, an act of terror.

Stay tuned.

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