Rescue the Fosters w/ Special Guest: Civil Rights Attorney - Robert Powell

Robert Powell is a family law, juvenile dependency, and civil rights attorney with 30 years of experience, located in San Jose, California. He is one of under 10 attorneys in California who regularly handle matters involving unconstitutional removal of children by government actors, substantive due process violations in juvenile proceedings due to judicial deception, and cases involving injury and death of children in foster care. He has practiced in that area 25 years.

Of the very, very small group that handle the civil rights matters involving CPS, he and two former employees are all of the 3 attorneys who handle juvenile dependency matters in state court also.

He has practiced extensively in the 9th Circuit and is behind fourteen published decisions of that Court, three of which are quite significant to the rights of parents and children. Beltran v. County of Santa Clara is arguably the most significant, as it removed “absolute immunity” for social workers, who until that decision were still being dismissed from lawsuits for having “absolute immunity,” which is just like it sounds. Beltran is followed by Hardwick v. Vreeken which held there is no immunity for presenting false testimony/evidence in juvenile dependency proceedings – often inaptly called the “Right to Lie” case. And finally, Burke v. County of Alameda, in which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals expressly clearly established that the failure to transfer a removed child to a non-offending parent, rather than take the child into protective custody was in fact a constitutional violation.

https://rrpassociates.com/