Child Welfare Upholds Black Family Separation While Denying Essential Constitutional Protections

Authors

Samantha Nichol

Abstract

This note examines the refusal to expand constitutional protections to include proceedings concerning child welfare. A system that largely mirrors and works in tandem with the criminal system, which enjoys robust constitutional safeguards. Important to the analysis of the rejection of these protections is an acknowledgement that child welfare, or welfare more broadly, is a system that upholds racial power structures and a tradition of family separation. Just as the overincarceration of Black people has been acknowledged by legal scholars to be a particular badge and incident of slavery, the child welfare system should also be critiqued as a system that inherently maintains racial power structures while being afforded less constitutional oversight.

Recommended Citation

Samantha Nichol, Child Welfare Upholds Black Family Separation While Denying Essential Constitutional Protections, 23 UC Law SF Race & Econ. Just. L.J. 63 (2026).
Available at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_race_poverty_law_journal/vol23/iss1/5