ROGERS v. COUNTY OF SAN JOAQUIN
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today released an opinion in ROGERS v. COUNTY OF SAN JOAQUIN, No. 05-16071, a civil rights appeal. The panel consisted of Warren J. Ferguson, Stephen Reinhardt, and Milan D. Smith, Jr., Circuit Judges.
REINHARDT, Circuit Judge:
The Rogers family brought this action under 42 U.S.C. ยง 1983, alleging that the conduct of social worker Charlotta Royal in removing the Rogers children from their home without a warrant violated their Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Both parties filed motions for summary judgment, although the Rogerses’ was as to liability only. The district court granted Royal’s motion on the basis of qualified immunity. Because we hold that it was clearly established that warrantless removal of children is permissible only in cases of exigency, and that it would have been apparent to a reasonable social worker that no exigency existed in this case, we reverse both the grant of summary judgment to Royal and the denial of partial summary judgment to the Rogerses. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND On August 20, 2001, San Joaquin County Child Protective Services received a report of child neglect in the Rogers home. The caller stated that three-year-old Shelby Rogers (”Shelby”) and five-year-old Thomas Rogers, Jr. (”Tommy”) were not toilet-trained, were locked in their rooms at night and in a room at their parents’ business during the day, were not receiving medical or dental care, that Tommy had lost his teeth due to bottle rot, that Shelby was still being fed with a bottle, that their home was dirty and maggot-infested, and that there were unsecured guns in the home. The intake unit did not view this report as requiring an emergency response, but rather classified it as warranting a response within ten days.1 Three days later, before any action had been taken to investiRoyal testified that the criteria that separate an emergency response from a ten-day response case varies, but examples of emergency response situations would be physical abuse or sexual abuse when the perpetrator is in the home, or the absence of food from the home. . . .