On April 30, 2019, the Tennessee House unanimously passed legislation that criminalizes parents who change their child’s school enrollment “with the intent” of hindering a child protective services investigation (CPS). (HB 917/SB 1359) This otherwise legal, and constitutionally protected activity, becomes a Class A misdemeanor carrying up to a year in jail, and if the parent moves to another state it is a Class E felony, carrying a sentence of one to three years in prison.  The fiscal note attached to this bill stated that the assumption was that one person every ten years would face this penalty and a mere $3,400 (over ten years) was attached to the bill. This will be codified in Title 37; Title 39 and Title 49. Watch the video here.

Why should this frighten every free citizen of this State.  This is police-state legislation.  A CPS investigation can be started by an anonymous report with NO facts and on the mere allegations of a disgruntled neighbor, boyfriend, relative, or SCHOOL TEACHER.  If a parent becomes upset with a child’s treatment at school, either academic, discipline, or social involvement, this legislation sets up the school personnel as the arbiters of the investigation, i.e., being the source of the referral as well as in control of the access to the child.

Currently, the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services can, and does, go directly to the school and has the authority to have a child pulled out of class for a private interview with the state-employed social worker without notice to the parent.  These interviews are not recorded nor are they witnessed by a neutral third party (such as a school counselor).  Even though in-school interviews were considered by the federal court in California under Greene v. Camreta (9^th Cir. 2009) and found to be a Fourth Amendment violation, by the time the case made its way to the United State Supreme Court, the child had reached the age of majority and the issue was found “moot” by the court.

As a family law attorney for 25 years, I have always been troubled by the agency’s secret access to children through the public-school system.  Children, unaware of the process, are interrogated by strangers over inane details of their family’s daily life. And I have seen children threatened with removal for their failure to fully cooperate with the investigator.

Just a few years ago, retired Rep. Sheila Butt had proposed legislation that all interviews conducted of children at school would be recorded and/or in the presence of a neutral third party.  After heavy lobbying against the passage of this bill by the Department of Children’s Services, it failed.

Those who have never seen the brutality of DCS will say, but this is intended to protect children who are the subject of a child abuse investigation.  To those I say, remember, an “investigation” is only that.  If the agency has evidence of brutality, such as physical abuse, they have the authority to immediately protect a child.  Now a complaint of “the child goes to school dirty” or something equally asinine, will trigger a private closed-door interrogation of your child.

At the end of the day, DCS operates a for-profit foster care industry.  Of Tennessee’s 8,500 children in foster care, 62% of them are there under the vague and undefined category of “neglect”; about 30% are there because of drug use in the home; and less than 10% are there due to physical or sexual abuse.

Once DCS has a child in “custody” they are on a 15-month clock for which they receive federal funds “no questions asked” under Title IVE.  These private foster care companies profit HUGE.  Omni Vision, the prodigy of previous DCS commissioner Jim Henry, contracts for over $50 million per year for foster care and services.  This is just ONE of the dozens of private contractors.

This new law is not only financially outrageous, it is constitutionally corrupt.

Parents have a constitutional right to parent their children as determined by our United States Supreme Court in Stanley v. Illinois (1972); Troxel v. Granville (2000), Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), and many more.

In 2011, the American Bar Association published an article which documented the ‘’legal” actions taken by the Nazi Germany judiciary to imprison innocent people.  The summation of the article was this, “everything they did was legal” and the lawyers who stood against this autocracy were impugned and ostracized.

All it takes for tyranny to rule is for good people to do nothing……….