Sassy Liberty AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS –

A judge in the state of Michigan has taken “black robe fever” to a whole new level letting a Marine and his wife know that they must either surrender their second amendment rights or surrender their grandson.

When the state of Michigan asked William and Jill Johnson, a retired Marine and his tackle shop-owning wife, to be foster parents to their grandson they readily agreed.  The alternative was for him to go to foster care and they agreed that was no alternative at all.

However, the Johnsons received a shock during the course of filing the necessary paperwork for placing their grandson in their custody.  A local judge gave them the warning that they no longer had all of their constitutional rights.

According to a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan –

“We know we are violating numerous constitutional rights here, but if you do not comply, we will remove the boy from your home.”

Now a case has been filed on behalf of the Johnsons as well as another couple – Brian and Naomi Mason by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF).  They name as defendant Nick Lyon – the director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

The complaint cites the agency’s draconian rules where foster and adoptive parents must surrender Constitutional rights and their possession of firearms or surrender their children. It alleges multiple civil rights as well as constitutional violations for enforcing restrictions on the Second Amendment rights of people who want to be foster or adoptive parents.”

 

The rule was first introduced to the Johnsons by social workers, who said, “If you want to care for your grandson, you will have to give up some of your constitutional rights.” When Mr. Johnson questioned them about their agenda, the social workers simply stated: “there would not be a power struggle, that they would just take his grandson and place him in a foster home.”

 

The complaint states –

“The Johnsons would possess and bear loaded and functional firearms for self-defense and defense of family, but refrain from doing so because they fear their foster child/grandchild being taken away from them by the state.” 

SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb said the statements from the caseworker and judge “are simply outrageous.”

“This amounts to coercion, with a child as their bartering chip. I cannot recall ever hearing anything so offensive and egregious, and we’ve handled cases like this in the past. Blatantly telling someone they must give up their civil rights in order to care for their own grandchild is simply beyond the pale.”

The lawsuit asserts that “the policy of the MDHHS, by implementing requirements and restrictions that are actually functional bans on the bearing of firearms for self-defense, both in and out of the home, completely prohibits foster and adoptive parents, and those who would be foster or adoptive parents, from the possession and bearing of readily-available firearms for the purpose of self-defense. This violates plaintiffs’ constitutional rights under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.”

Gottlieb believes “This is a case we simply must pursue. State agencies and the people who work in those agencies simply cannot be allowed to disregard someone’s civil rights.”

In a similar case in Illinois, the state also demanded that the Constitutional rights of foster or adoptive parents be set aside. In the case of the Shults family, Colleen Shults works as a nurse at Danville Correctional Center under the state Department of Corrections. Some months prior, she received a letter from her employer’s Central Intelligence Unit “that prisoners in the IDOC system were using people locator websites on the Internet to learn the home addresses of IDOC staff, including correctional officers and nurses.”

A letter warned Colleen and her counterparts to be careful and diligent for their safety. Common sense would determine that one would possess a firearm for self-defense, except since the Shults family had also been providing foster care for the state for many years, the policy of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services suspends their Second Amendment rights.

 

As a result, SAF filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Shultses.

The complaint stated –

“The Shultses would possess loaded and functional firearms for self-defense and defense of family, but refrain from doing so because they fear their foster children being taken away from them by the state, and/or being prohibited from being foster parents in the future, all due to the IDCFS policy complained of herein.”

SAF also brought a previous suit against Chicago over its handgun ban and later against the state over its restrictions on concealed carry. It won both cases.

According to Gottlieb –

“It was our legal action against Chicago’s handgun ban that incorporated the Second Amendment to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. It was another of our lawsuits that forced the state legislature to adopt a concealed carry statute in Illinois. Now we’re in court to make sure that the state cannot discriminate against foster parents who merely wish to exercise the rights we’ve restored in Illinois.”

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

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