Abstract

Caseworkers or child protective workers are government officials tasked with investigating allegedly endangered children and their parents or guardians. They work for state agencies and exercise police power, but this kind of police power intrusively interferes with the life of an individual more than police power wielded by other law enforcement agencies. The Fourth Amendment provides individuals with protections against illegal searches and seizures of bodies and private spaces by the government, and police officers, as well as caseworkers, are required to respect these constitutional protections. Caseworkers, who are state actors, are dedicated to public safety in that they have a governmental interest in protecting children from dangerous caregivers, but their service must abide by the constraints of the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unlawful searches and seizures. unlawful searches and seizures. Many agree that law enforcement encompasses more than one group of governmental actors dedicated to keeping the public safe. Police officers, sheriffs, air marshals, border patrol agents, and state troopers all fall under this umbrella of law enforcement. There are other groups that qualify as cops, too. Many people would include Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents on the list, but few may realize that child protective caseworkers are cops, too. These state actors fall under the category of law enforcement because they investigate offenses against children. However, many people do not see them as such. Much of the public considers child protective workers to be “social workers” who strive only to protect children from unfit caregivers, and this view excises them from the category of law enforcement. Because of this perspective, caseworkers get away with too many uncontested rights violations. They violate families’ constitutional rights and suffer no consequences most of the time. Dedicated to maintaining the safety of children, these agents exercise a kind of police power that allows them to regulate family life,asserting an authority to control the life of a parent and child, and meddling with family privacy. Caseworkers get away with this illegal conduct because they believe, like many of us, that the rules governing law enforcement officers do not apply to them because they do good or fall under an exception to the rule. However, they are not exempt from this restriction, and their unreasonable invasions of privacy against the home and body do more harm than good, especially when they have weaponized the Fourth Amendment against families of color. This provision of the United States Constitution imposes a burden on racially marginalized parents and children when it ostensibly guarantees protection from illegal governmental activity. The family policing agency’s failure to abide by the constraints of the Fourth Amendment stems from the refusal to recognize the constitutional rights of parents and children of color, which, in turn, burdens these families. Whether caseworkers realize it or not, their commission of Fourth Amendment violations against communities of color is a tool of white supremacy, which society should resist.

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