Camreta v. Greene: Will the U.S. Supreme Court look again at Fourth Amendment implications of social services investigations?

On March 1,2011,  the United States Supreme Court heard oral argument in the consolidated cases of Camreta v. Greene and Alford v. Greene. The center of the controversy, an in-school child interview by a social worker investigating a child protective services report, brings to the forefront issues  regarding the applicability of the Fourth Amendment to social services investigations.

For good or ill, the Supreme Court has an opportunity to revisit the issues that have long been neglected since the court entered its 1972 ruling in Wyman v. James. In that case, the Court authorized a warrantless search by social services of the home of an AFDC recipient, holding among other things that the search was reasonable and that it did not implicate the warrant clause of the Fourth Amendment.  Since that time, a number of Circuits have narrowly construed application of Wyman to its own facts and have instead imposed a warrant requirement in a number of situations involving social worker interviews of children (curiously the Fourth Circuit is not one of them). In Camreta, the Ninth Circuit, while not mandating an across the board requirement for a warrant requirement absent consent or exigent circumstances, nonetheless indicated that based on the facts of that case, a warrant was necessary before the social worker could lawfully conduct an interview with the child in question.

From a review of the Camreta transcript, the High Court doesn’t seem terribly inclined toward  rendering a ruling on the merits of the cases. The Court briefly entertained and then seemed to brush aside considerations that there no longer existed a controversy and that the cases which brought  the matter to the court’s attention were now moot (the plaintiff now being 17, living in another state and not seeking monetary damages). Nonetheless, the Court gave no indication it desired to get its hands dirty with the details in Camreta. Rather, there was every appearance that the Court will simply  vacate the holding of the Ninth Circuit’s decision, thus eliminating the case as precedent and restoring qualified immunity upon governmental officials who choose to interview children without a warrant.

Scotusblog’s Case Page for Camreta can be found at http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/camreta-v-greene/ . Appellant/appellee as well as amicus briefs can be found on this page

as well as a written and audio transcript.