I tend to agree with Eugene's post. My only concern would be whether the interaction between the father and son and state police or welfare authorities was adequate - so that it was clear to the father what it meant to say that he would take his son back when the boy was ready to follow the rules.
Alan Brownstein From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Volokh, Eugene Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2008 2:53 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: RE: Amish & foster care I'm not sure what the right answer is, but I'm inclined to say that: (1) When a parent refuses to take a child back -- not just can't take the child back because the child won't come, or because the child is a physical danger to the other children, but refuses to take the child back -- it's hard to see how he has a constitutional right to insist that the state ever return the child, much less that the state take care of the child in a particular way. (2) As a practical matter, my sense is that finding good foster care is very hard as it is for the state. Finding good foster care where the family has a particular highly uncommon lifestyle would be much harder, especially since (to my knowledge) many people who have precisely this lifestyle -- the Amish -- tend not to want to get too involved with the state, and thus probably aren't normally enrolled in the foster care system. (3) Likewise, telling foster parents -- who often have multiple foster children -- that they must "honor [Amish] values," for instance by refusing him to play the video games that another child is playing, or to go watch a video while the family is watching in the living room, strikes me as quite burdensome on the foster parents. They have quite a difficult job as it is without having to tell the new kid that he can't do what all the other kids are doing. Perhaps this is different as to ear piercings or a few other things, but requiring foster parents to have completely different lifestyles for their various foster children, and for themselves, seems to me to be more of a burden than we can reasonably demand. Let me also ask: How are things done when a foster child has been raised to keep kosher or halal? I assume one solution is to place the foster child in a household that also keeps kosher or halal, but what if no such households are available? One problem, I take it, is that in some such situations the child may himself wish to continue keeping kosher or halal, but might be unable to arrange this for himself if he's young enough. Eugene ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2008 2:18 PM To: religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu Subject: Amish & foster care I'd be curious to know whether folks think there were any legal wrongs committed in the following story, which comes to me as true, and whether folks have ideas about what Dad can or should do: A 16 year old boy, one of 12 children in an Amish family, got into an argument with his father (about clothing) and ran away. Dad was worried and called the police, who located the boy and asked dad to take him back. But dad said "when he is ready to follow the rules." Whereupon the state child welfare agency filed a dependent neglect petition and placed the boy in foster care. That's not what dad wanted to happen, but he didn't understand the system. Now he has hired lawyer to get it undone and get the boy returned. But in the month that the boy has been in foster care, he has been taken swimming, to the arcade, played video games, watched movies, and had his ear pierced, among other non-Amish things. The state child welfare agency has even brought the boy back to his home to tell his siblings about life on the outside. Dad wants the boy to come home, but is concerned about how he has been changed by his exposure to the modern world, and how that will affect the rest of the family if he returns. Any ideas, other than "Don't argue with your teenager"? Does a child welfare agency have any obligation to try to place a child in foster care in a home that reflects his family's non-mainstream but lawful values, or to tell foster parents to honor those values? Does it make a difference whether those values are religious or secular values? Does the age of the child (16) make a difference? Thanks, Art Spitzer Arthur B. Spitzer Legal Director American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area 1400 20th Street, N.W., Suite 119 Washington, D.C. 20036 T. 202-457-0800 F. 202-452-1868 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.aclu-nca.org ************** Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for fuel-efficient used cars. (http://autos.aol.com/used?ncid=aolaut00050000000007)
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