CA6: Social workers’ in-school interviews of children violated 4A, but law not clearly established

Social workers’ in-school interviews of children of a parent who tested positive for drugs violated the Fourth Amendment, but they get qualified immunity because no case holds what they did was clearly established. Schulkers v. Kammer, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 9867 (6th Cir. Mar. 30, 2020):

For the reasons that follow, we find that Plaintiffs did not have a clearly established Fourth Amendment right to be free from warrantless, in-school interviews by social workers investigating child abuse at the relevant time. This is because our precedent is unclear about the role of the Fourth Amendment in the specific factual circumstances alleged here, i.e., when social workers perform an in-school interview of a child pursuant to an abuse investigation. However, we also exercise our discretion to consider the second prong of the qualified immunity inquiry and conclude that Defendants’ alleged conduct in this case was unconstitutional. See Pearson, 555 U.S. at 236. We hold that, at a minimum, social workers investigating child abuse must have “some definite and articulable evidence giving rise to a reasonable suspicion that a child has been abused or is in imminent danger of abuse” before seizing a child from his or her school classroom without a warrant and when no other exception to the warrant requirement applies. Doe v. Heck, 327 F.3d 492, 515 (7th Cir. 2003) (quoting Brokaw v. Mercer County, 235 F.3d 1000, 1019 (7th Cir. 2000)).