Calabretta

This case involves whether a social worker and a police officer were entitled to qualified immunity, for a coerced entry into a home to investigate suspected child abuse, interrogation of a child, and strip search of a child, conducted without a search warrant and without a special exigency.

Facts.

The two individual defendants moved for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. The district judge denied it.

Some individual called the Department of Social Services October 27, 1994, with the information that gave rise to this case. The report says that the caller was anonymous, but the report redacts names, thus it is not clear whether the caller gave her name but the Department treated her as anonymous, or whether she refused to give her name. The caller said that she was once awakened by a child screaming “No Daddy, no” at 1:30 A.M. at the Calabretta home. Then two days ago she (or someone else, possibly a Department of Social Services employee — it is not clear from the report) heard a child in the home scream “No, no, no” in the late afternoon. The caller said that the children “are school age and home studied” and that “this is an extremely religious family.”

The…