Family Law Prof Blog

Coronavirus and labor law: Know your rights, from paid sick leave to working from home

From Los Angeles Times 

As Lee Olesky heard the first reports of coronavirus in Sacramento County, where she is employed as a social worker, she began to panic.

Olesky, 41, visits the homes of sick and elderly people on a daily basis, and worried she could carry the new illness to her clients. At the office, she doesn’t have an assigned seat but works at “floating” cubicles used by countless other field workers.

The anxiety built until, last week, she casually asked her supervisor whether she could work from home for the rest of the month as a precaution. Her supervisor was skeptical, and “kind of made a face,” but approved her request. Still, Olesky is required to venture out into the world for field visits daily as part of her job. She’s not alone.

The novel coronavirus outbreak has sparked drastic measures to prevent its spread across California, the United States and the world, and on Wednesday was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization.

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U.S. Supreme Court Lets Hardline Trump Immigration Policy Take Effect

From Reuters 

The U.S. Supreme Court gave the go-ahead on Monday for one of President Donald Trump's hardline immigration policies, allowing his administration to implement a rule denying legal permanent residency to certain immigrants deemed likely to require government assistance in the future.

The justices, on a 5-4 vote, granted the administration's request to lift a lower court's injunction that had blocked the so-called public charge policy while litigation over its legality continues. The rule has been criticized by immigrant rights advocates as a "wealth test" that would disproportionately keep out non-white immigrants.

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US imposes visa rules for pregnant women on ‘birth tourism’

From AP News

The Trump administration is imposing new visa rules aimed at restricting “birth tourism,” in which women travel to the United States to give birth so their children can have U.S. citizenship. The regulations, which take effect Friday, address one of President Donald Trump’s main political priorities.

The regulations seek to chip away at the number of foreigners who take advantage of the constitutional provision granting“birthright citizenship” to anyone born in the United States, a particular peeve of Trump’s. Under the new rules, pregnant applicants will be denied a tourist visa unless they can prove they must come to the U.S. to give birth for medical reasons and they have money to pay for it or have another compelling reason — not just because they want their child to have an American passport.

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Child Abduction

From The Guardian:

Three men and a woman have been accused of helping parents abduct their own children across Australia in contravention of family law orders.

Detectives say as part of a two-year investigation 10 missing children have been located with a parent who had abducted them.

“Five of these are believed to be linked to this group of people,” federal police assistant commissioner Debbie Platz said in a statement on Thursday.

Read more here

What's behind Indiana's increase in child abuse reports?

From The Greensburg Daily News:

Shortly after an elementary principal alerted deputies something might be wrong with a child who had been absent from school for a few days, the frightened 9-year-old boy was laying in the fetal position in the lobby of the Johnson County Sherriff’s Office.

The boy’s pale face was bruised, scratched and cut. His eyes were partially shut and droopy, strained with broken blood vessels. Dried blood and drainage was coming from his ears. His neck was branded with ligature marks. He was shaking.

When a deputy tried to speak to him that night in October, the boy was disoriented. He couldn’t talk clearly and cried out that he was hungry and asked for food, according to court documents.

The boy’s mother demonstrated to police how she had intentionally and repeatedly hit her son in the groin three or four times, causing swelling, the documents said. She indicated she had lost control and knew it was wrong, but that she did it anyways. She didn’t send him or his brother to school because of their visible injuries.

The boy’s mother, Krystle Nikole Case, 31, was recently charged with two felonies: neglect of a dependent and battery resulting in serious bodily injury to a child. A judge issued a no-contact order that will keep her from seeing her son, even if she is released during her case.

This story is one of nearly 27,000 confirmed child abuse or neglect cases in Indiana each year.

The number of Hoosier child abuse and neglect cases has risen consistently since 2011, according to the Indiana Youth Institute’s annual KIDS COUNT in Indiana Data Book.

The report — which also gives data on homelessness, infant mortality, youth suicide and other topics — details how children are “surviving, not thriving” through 2015 statistics and year-to-year comparisons of the various challenges they face.

James Wide, deputy communications director for Indiana’s Department of Child Services, said although the number of child abuse reports are going up, it’s not for a bad reason. Wide attributes the increased number of reports to more cases being filed because of more awareness about child abuse issues, not necessarily because more incidents are occurring.

His office deals with all sorts of child welfare issues, including handling child support and protecting children from all types of abuse and neglect.

Before 2012, the state didn’t have a centralized child abuse and neglect hotline. Before the hotline, Wide said there were more than 300 numbers scattered across the state that weren’t always answered by a professional — or answered at all.

But the introduction of the Indiana Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline streamlined reporting. Anyone who calls 1-800-800-5556, any time, is connected to a trained family case manager to describe what they think might be going on with a child.

Read more here.

Programme aims to help people affected by 'parental alienation'

From The Guardian:

Parental alienation – a phenomenon where one parent poisons their child against the other parent – has become such a feature of the most difficult family breakdowns that Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, is to offer targeted support for those affected following a government-funded intensive therapeutic pilot programme.

Distinct from the all-too-common acrimony between divorcing parents, the syndrome is an internationally recognised phenomenon. In America and Canada, “parenting coordinators” are ordered and supervised by the courts to help restore relationships between parents and children identified as “alienated”. In Mexico and Brazil, alienating a child from a parent is a criminal act.

Psychiatrist Richard Gardner developed the concept 20 years ago, defining it as “a disorder that arises primarily in the context of child custody disputes. Its primary manifestation is the child’s campaign of denigration against a parent, a campaign that has no justification. It results from the combination of a programming (brainwashing) parent’s indoctrinations and the child’s own contributions to the vilification of the target parent.”

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Legal technicians provide family law assistance

From the News Tribune:

VANCOUVER, WASH. - Navigating the family law system can be an overwhelming and emotional process, especially for people who have no choice but to represent themselves in court.

The number of pro se litigants has steadily increased across the country, with between 60 to 90 percent of family law cases involving at least one party with no legal representation, according to information released by the American Bar Association in 2013.

"People are kind of in a society of do-it-yourself. Some people may be able to afford an attorney, but others can't. We are seeing more and more people representing themselves," Clark County Chief Deputy Clerk Baine Wilson said.

Local and state agencies recognize a strong need for assistance and have begun offering alternatives to help guide the public through the process, reported The Columbian.

Read more here.

Children & the Law Resources

• ABA Center on Children and the Law
• Children's Rights Council
• National Indian Child Welfare Association
• UN Convention of the Rights of the Child