Editorial: Open up, or go hungry

Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.

San Diego County officials routinely send investigators from the district attorney's office to the homes of welfare applicants.

If the head of a household does not allow the unannounced investigators in to conduct searches, which include opening medicine cabinets and dresser drawers and poking around in bedroom closets, the application will be turned down.

County officials permit this intimidation and invasion of privacy on the grounds that all people, even those whose applications appear fine, are potential cheats.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to uphold this program - on the spurious grounds that a poor person could simply refuse the search. We say spurious, because that would cut off the family's only chance for government assistance.

And the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected, without comment, an appeal of the circuit court's decision brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

This program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment. In our view, the Supreme Court should have taken the case.

Here is what the Fourth Amendment says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

As warped as this may sound, the house searches are directed only at those people whose applications have not raised any overt suspicions. A separate process is used to investigate people whose applications are considered fraudulent.

So right away, the searches are unreasonable and without probable cause. Additionally, a person can hardly feel secure in his house if law enforcement agents are at his door, effectively saying, in the words of an ACLU attorney who argued the case, "Give up your constitutional rights or watch your kids go hungry."

The ruling of the appeals court panel, and the subsequent decision by the high court to not intervene, just gives license to all other counties to behave in the same outrageous manner.