Who ya' gonna call?

You're a home-schooler, and at 9:30 p.m., the police and a social worker show up at your door--surprise! This is exactly what happened to a Nevada home-schooling family in early December. The social worker falsely stated, "We do not need a search warrant to enter." The family allowed the police in but also called the Home School Legal Defense Association's 24-hour hot line. HSLDA attorney T.J. Schmidt counseled them to refuse entry to the social worker and to ask what the allegations against the family were. The social worker refused to answer, but made further threats to the family, even though the police had found nothing out of the ordinary.

The assumption that social workers can ignore families' constitutionally protected rights is a common deception on the part of social workers throughout the nation. To counteract this problem in Nevada, Nevada home-school leader Frank Schnorbus and, ironically, the family being investigated, worked with the HSLDA to enact a new Nevada law (SB 402) in June 2005 that requires all social workers to be trained in their duty to protect families' rights during an investigation and also requires social workers to inform families of the allegations against them. Apparently, this particular social worker had not been trained yet.

After HSLDA Senior Counsel Chris Klicka informed the social worker of the new law during a follow-up phone call, the social worker finally listed the allegations, which included feces all over the house and no food in the house--all of which were false, and the result of a malicious tip. Klicka sent a letter describing the various violations of the family's rights that had occurred during the investigation; the family has not been pursued any further since the intervention of the HSLDA.