Do Welfare Applicants Forfeit the Fourth Amendment?
Radley Balko | November 27, 2007, 3:49pm
That seems to be the conclusion to draw from the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to hear a case from San Diego, where the D.A.'s office has been sending agents to conduct suspicionless, warrantless searches on the private homes of welfare applicants.
Yes, applicants were free to refuse the searches, though I suspect that refusing a search would itself be (unofficially) enough to trigger further investigation. Refusing a search also means forfeiting welfare benefits.
This is part of a series of incidents across the country over the last few years using administrative or regulatory procedures to conduct warrantless searches for criminal activity (yes, I'm writing an article on it).
I suspect the law-and-order response to the policy in San Diego would be something along the lines of "if they can't prove they're clean, they don't deserve my tax dollars." Of course, if everyone who received any sort of government assistance had to consent to a search of their home, the Fourth Amendment would be pretty much null(er). For example, I'd guess there'd be quite a bit more outrage if these fishing expeditions/searches were being done on the homes of, say, middle class kids applying for government-subsidized student loans instead of low-income people applying for welfare.
Paul | November 27, 2007, 6:24pm | #
If the government wants to place certain restrictions on you in exchange for that check, then how is that a violation of the Constitution? It's a voluntary exchange that a person can refuse if he or she does not like the tradeoff.
Marc, I might *might* agree with this, if there was something within the constitution which said "The above may be null and void by contractual agreement". I'm a libtertarian and as such I think that 99% of welfare of any kind is the principal source of the downfall of mankind (a little overstated, maybe) but receiving benefits from the government can't possibly
implicitly render your civil rights null and void.
If anything, the Constitution implies you have
more rights than those explicitly enumerated within said document.
You may be able to make some very narrow argument that people living in public housing may be subject to certain limits on their privacy-- as public housing can often be the breeding place for all manner of Bad Things(tm) which can victimize the very people who live there. But again, it would be a very narrow argument- something akin to tenant/landlord law-- seeing as the government is your landlord*.
But once you start making the argument that upon receipt of a dime from a government, you're in forfeiture of your rights, that pretty much makes us all in forfeit of our rights:
o Farmers and farm subsidies.
o Anyone on social security.
o Homeowners receiving interest writeoff.
o Anyone who has ever received a check from FEMA
*not to be snarky here, but now that property rights have largely been gutted, the government is the implicit landlord to all of us.
