Child Services are Fucking Retards

[Spekio]

No, it didn't. Under Tennessee law the father's parental rights were automatically terminated when he was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. Under the law of that state the termination of his rights was legal and proper.

Extended family does not automatically get custody, it's quite common for children removed from a home to be temporarily placed with an unrelated foster family until a judge sorts out where the child should be placed permanently.

I don't know if you are being obtuse on purpose - I said most places default to familiar ties, I never stated that would always be the case. And consider the fact that the decision was reversed.

Um... what relevance do Amish children have to this case? They are adequately fed, housed, the Amish community pools resources to cover medical expenses, and per a US Surpreme Court decision they keep their children in school until the age of 14 and are also required to make sure those children meet certain competency standards. This has been extended to other groups, like Hasidic Jews in New York City who likewise run their own parallel educational system. One quarter of the Amish children move into the mainstream and as a general rule they don't have a problem obtaining a GED and even moving on to higher education if they are so inclined, others apprentice into trades. Per the SCotUS, their education and care is considered adequate and not grounds for removal of children.

The homeschoolers ARE an issue - that is still be worked out in the courts. A lot of jurisdictions are accepting homeschooling that results in a GED certificate, others are requiring periodic testing of homeschooled children, yet others are a free-for-all, true. The states require that children be educated, they don't prescribe exactly how that education must take place.

This is besides the point, what I was trying to illustrate is the amount of leeway the U.S. gives parents in raising their children. I am, however waiting for corroboration on your statement about constitunional family rights having shifted. You only offered conjectures.

Please understand, when it comes it comes to family law in the US there is NOT one state. There are fifty states, all with slightly differing laws (in the one case, Louisiana, it's even based on the Napoleonic Code rather than English Common Law like the other 49 states).

When I say State I do not mean the state entity of the federation, I mean the sum of all government, public services, armed forces, judicial system etc. Still, you cannot dispute the SCOTUS is the ultimate appellate jurisdiction in the US, and the final say to constitutional matters.

Now, the last time I had any sort of regular concern with CPS I was working at a clinic in Chicago, in Illinois. There were a bunch of cases involving child custody, and it's not as cut and dried as you present the issue, at least not in Illinois. Sure, there was an ideal of restoring families but there were families where it was just too fucking dangerous to leave with children. The state is not just responsible for finding a place to put a kid, that place has to meet at least minimal standards. Blood relatives that are drug dealers and prostituting themselves to random strangers or committing crimes to feed a drug habit (or, as often happens, doing both those things) are not usually considered fit parents, as just one example. Unemployed and homeless relatives are not likely to gain custody. The state prefers biological relatives but the decision is by no means as automatic as you imply. Even in the SCotUS case you quote the point was that the decision is not solely based on one factor (the best interests of the child) implying the court recognizes that there may well be multiple factors at work.

In reality, the bio-family does not always wind up with custody.

Please show me where I said anything of this. I'll say it one more time, the State prefers biological relatives, but this is not an imperative considering there is the Bonus Pater Familias tto be observed. This is a strawman , pure and simple. What I said was that it is the State's interest to keep families togheter, and that child's best interest do not trump the rights of the family altogheter, not that family trumps other consitutional rights such as life. That was the very thing I was trying to show when I quoted that jurisprudence.