WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court set aside a controversial ruling that would have required child-care workers and police officers to obtain a search warrant or a parent’s permission before speaking to a child at school about possible sexual abuse at home.
The justices had been urged by a broad coalition of school officials, state lawyers and the Obama administration to reject the ruling. The justices dismissed the Oregon lawsuit where the rule had arisen and voided everything that had grown out of the case.
It began when police arrested a man for sexually abusing a young boy. The boy’s parents said they suspected the man had also molested his own 9-year-old daughter.
A caseworker for the Oregon Department of Human Services went to the girl’s school along with a police officer and interviewed her. Though she reported she had been abused at home, a jury later failed to convict the father, and the charges were dropped.
The child’s mother filed suit, alleging the caseworker and the police officer violated her constitutional rights by interviewing her daughter without her permission. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court said it could not rule squarely on the issue for several procedural reasons. Still, the justices decided to “vacate the part of the 9th Circuit opinion” that requires search warrants.
