WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court rejected a challenge Monday to a county's practice of routinely searching welfare applicants' homes without warrants and ruling out assistance for those who refuse to let them in.
The justices refused, without comment, to intervene in the case from San Diego County, where investigators from the local District Attorney's office show up unannounced at applicants' homes and conduct searches that include peeking into closets and cabinets. The visits do not require any suspicion of fraud and are intended to confirm that people are eligible for government aid.
Failure to submit to the searches, which can last an hour, disqualifies applicants from assistance.
The 10-year-old program was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of six single parents who were seeking assistance. The welfare applicants argued that the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches, protects them from the home visits.
"When the investigator conducts the home inspection, no part of the home is off-limits," they said.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, upholding the program, said the Supreme Court in 1971 allowed social workers to visit homes in New York to determine eligibility. The appeals court, in a 2-1 decision, said the visits do not even constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment in part because people are free to turn away the investigators.
Eight appeals court judges voted to have the full San Francisco-based court hear the case. Seven of those judges called the program "an attack on the poor."
The case is Sanchez v. San Diego, 07-211.
A close decision, eight to seven, but a proper one, and totally unexpected from the court that is the most liberal--and most often reversed--of any of our US Circuit Courts.
And I agree wholeheartedly. This isn't an 'attack on the poor", but merely local government showing some responsibility and trying to ensure that those who apply for and live off of public assistance funds actually meet the criteria and deserve it. Truth is, there are untold numbers of cheaters and frauds on the welfare rolls all across this country, and every one of those people is sucking up a benefit intended for a truly needy family who is currently going without. While I'm no fan of the welfare system in general, I take serious issue with people who milk the program and scam it and anything that deters or catches these crooks and leads to their prosecution and incarceration is a good thing.
And if the people on welfare have a problem with it or consider it too intrusive, they can always give up the welfare checks and/or move out of the houses that the rest of us are paying for and support themselves in the workforce just like almost everyone else does. Like the Supreme Court pointed out in it's 1971 decision referenced above, they get to choose.
In my opinion, the government needs to check every welfare home for evidence of high living, drug use, illegal weapons, etc. These people set themselves up as children of the state when they applied for and took public money in lieu of jobs and that made the government their de facto parents. Parents have not only a right but a responsibility to monitor their charges and make sure that they're doing the right thing and that holds equally true for the heads of individual households and the heads of our nation's social services programs. As the people asking for welfare are admitting that they're in trouble and are in need of help from the rest of us, I'm of the belief that we need to be helping them make the right choices, and that means making sure that they aren't using drugs, making sure that their children are eating right and also ensuring that the single moms who are asking us to raise their kids for them are working part-time and/or going to school and not letting able-bodied but non-supporting men move in with them.
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