Losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to a parent.
Losing a child to faceless, agenda-driven bureaucrats with little or no observation of due process is even worse.
That is, however, what has happened to Montana resident Todd Kolstad and his wife Krista, whose minor daughter was taken away with no warrant because they objected, on religious grounds, to their daughter's claims to want to transition to a boy. There are many things wrong with all this.
A Montana couple who claim they lost custody of their daughter after opposing a gender transition now allege the 14-year-old was taken from them by the state’s child protective services without a warrant, according to a new lawsuit.
The teen’s father, Todd Kolstad, and stepmother, Krista, slapped the agency with a federal suit earlier this week, claiming that social workers allegedly took their child without due process by not having a judge sign off on the warrant, the Daily Montanan reported.
The couple also allege their religious freedoms were ignored and their civil rights violated when CPS opted to put the teen in a psychiatric facility in Wyoming instead of Montana — and then banned them from communicating with the child.
There are a couple of problems with the Montana Child Protective Services (CPS) claims here.
First, the parents' religious objections: Under the First Amendment, all Americans are guaranteed the freedom of conscience; the Kolstad's had a religious objection to their daughter's professed desire to "transition," and that seems to have been ignored. But more than that, their parental rights seem to have been simply set aside. There is no accusation of abuse; there appears to be no evidence that their daughter was suffering any harm from her parent's objections to her going along with what is, candidly, a social contagion.
The legal saga first erupted when the Kolstads’ said the teen, who is only identified as “H.K.” in court papers, told them last year that he identifies as transgender and wanted to transition to a male.
The couple, however, said they refused the teen’s request because of their strong religious beliefs.
State officials were subsequently alerted last summer when H.K. expressed suicidal thoughts at school and was admitted to a hospital for in-patient psychiatric care after claiming to have ingested a mix of ibuprofen and toilet bowl cleaner.
It's unclear whether the "mix of ibuprofen and toilet bowl cleaner" presented an actual danger to the child's life; the fact that she was admitted to a hospital for treatment would seem to indicate that there was a risk. But this, again, is an argument for therapy, which could have been done without 1) abrogating the parents' rights to oversee the treatment of their minor child or 2) removing the child from the home.
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The child, "H.K." was not only taken with no due process, but the social workers on the case justified it by claiming in an affidavit that the child was "an imminent risk of physical harm." Todd Kolstad has accused them of lying in the affidavit:
Concerned about the risk of suicide and imminent harm, state officials argued, at the time, that they were justified in taking custody of H.K.
But the couple claim the social workers lied in an affidavit that H.K. faced “an imminent risk of physical harm” and left out any mention of their religious beliefs.
“Seizing a child without a warrant is excusable only when officials have reasonable cause to believe that the child is likely to experience serious bodily harm in the time that would be required to obtain a warrant,” the court filing states.
"H.K." was taken out of the state and initially put in a facility in Wyoming. She now is living with her biological mother in Canada; it is unclear whether the biological mother supports the minor's "transition" or not.
The Kolstad's case presents some troubling issues. First is the overreach and violation of due process by Montana CPS, in removing a child from their home with no warrant, or indeed what appears to be no due process of any kind. But second, and more troubling, is the fact that all this arose from a social contagion: The "transgender" craze that seems to be infecting so many American youth. Would the child have been removed from her home had the transgender issue not been a factor? That we cannot know, but there have been minor children attempting suicide before (one of my sisters, for example, many, many years ago) without being perfunctorily removed from their homes. Such attempts are, yes, often a cry for help — but barring any actual abuse, which does not appear to be the case here, that's something parents must be involved in.
The Kolstads, without doubt, have a long, difficult legal road ahead. It's not right; it's not fair; it's a violation of their rights that they should even have to go through this. But such is the difficulty we have with a permanent bureaucratic class that sees part of its purpose as enforcing the social fad du jour.
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