Calabretta v. Floyd: Ninth Circuit Rules Warrantless CPS Entry Into Homeschooling Family's Home Unconstitutional
The Ninth Circuit held in 1999 that a California social worker and police officer violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments by forcing entry, without a warrant or exigent circumstances, into the home of Robert and Shirley Calabretta — a homeschooling Christian family — to investigate an anonymous CPS report. The court denied qualified immunity.
In 1994, following anonymous reports referencing crying heard from the Calabretta home, a Yolo County, California CPS social worker and a Woodland police officer forced entry into the home of Robert and Shirley Calabretta, a Christian homeschooling family, to interview and physically examine their children. The Calabrettas sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The Ninth Circuit affirmed judgment in their favor in Calabretta v. Floyd, 189 F.3d 808 (9th Cir. 1999), holding the entry violated clearly established Fourth Amendment law and denying qualified immunity. The decision has been repeatedly cited by homeschool-legal-defense and parental-rights litigators as a key precedent limiting CPS investigations of families with unpopular religious, political, or educational views.