Jerri Lynn Ward alerts me to a bad amendment approved in the legislative session’s waning hours heaping new authority on CPS to allow them to undertake child seizures and interrogations without first notifying parents. The Parent Guidance Center issued this press release calling for a gubernatorial veto. See discussions from Tim Lambert of the Texas Home School Coalition and the blog The Travis Monitor. According to Lambert:

the bill was substituted in committee for a very different SB 1064, which was passed out of the Senate and sent to the House. The new SB 1064 gave the court authority to force parents to give CPS access to the child and/or transport the child for “interview, examination and investigation,” without a court hearing or notice to the parent. Worst of all, the language in the current statute that requires CPS to prove “good cause shown” was stricken. Thus this bill would allow CPS, during an investigation in which the parents would not waive their 4th amendment rights, entrance into their home, access to medical or mental health records of their children or transportation of the child, on the simple filing of an affidavit by a CPS worker with no hearing or opportunity for the parents or their legal counsel to present their case.

[efoods]The bill language allows CPS to access records without parental consent or a court hearing and lets them transport a child for questioning based only on an affidavit (without a hearing or a finding of “good cause”) if the parents won’t consent. Parents must be notified afterward as soon as practicable, but I don’t see why it’s not “practicable” to notify them beforehand.

This is clearly an overreaction to the fiasco surrounding the Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup, and an unnecessary one. I’m disappointed in Rep. Patrick Rose and Sen. Kirk Watson for carrying this piece of junk. Ward, Lambert and other conservatives are calling on the Governor to veto SB 1440 and I’d have to agree the bill deserves an ignominious demise.

Follow this link to tell the Governor your opinion.

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