## Facts

- San Diego County implemented “Project 100%,” requiring all applicants for cash assistance under California’s CalWORKs program to participate in a home verification visit, even absent individualized suspicion of fraud or ineligibility.
- District Attorney investigators (sworn peace officers) conducted the visits, which included entry into the home and a “walk through” to gather information for eligibility verification.
- Investigators compared observations with the welfare application to verify eligibility factors such as residence, the presence of an eligible dependent child, declared assets, and whether an “absent” parent actually lived in the home.
- Applicants were informed the visit was a condition of eligibility; refusal did not trigger arrest or prosecution but resulted in denial of benefits.
- Plaintiffs (welfare applicants/recipients) filed a § 1983 class action alleging the program imposed suspicionless, warrantless home searches violating the Fourth Amendment, the California Constitution, and California welfare regulations.
- The district court granted summary judgment for the County, and plaintiffs appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether Project 100% home visits and interior “walk through” inspections constitute “searches” under the Fourth Amendment.
2. If so, whether the searches are unreasonable because they are conducted without a warrant and without individualized suspicion.
3. Whether conditioning welfare benefits on agreement to the home visit renders consent involuntary or otherwise violates unconstitutional-conditions limits.
4. Whether the program violates the California Constitution’s privacy/search protections or California welfare regulations allegedly barring “mass and indiscriminate” home visits.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the County.
- The court held the home visits are Fourth Amendment “searches” because investigators enter and inspect the interior of the home.
- The court held the searches are reasonable under a special-needs/totality-of-circumstances analysis focused on eligibility verification and fraud prevention rather than ordinary law enforcement.
- The court held applicants’ consent was voluntary even though refusal resulted in benefit denial.
- The court rejected the California constitutional and regulatory challenges.
- A partial dissent would have found the searches unreasonable and/or the consent invalid due to coercion tied to subsistence benefits.

## Legal Principles

- Government entry and inspection of the interior of a home constitutes a Fourth Amendment search.
- A warrantless, suspicionless search may be reasonable when justified by governmental program interests beyond ordinary law enforcement and when the intrusion is limited in scope under the totality of the circumstances.
- Consent is not necessarily involuntary merely because refusal carries loss of a government benefit; voluntariness turns on the coercion analysis and whether the condition requires an otherwise unconstitutional search.
- State constitutional privacy/search claims may fail where the asserted protections are treated as no more protective than the Fourth Amendment in the challenged context.
- A generally applicable eligibility verification program tied to welfare applications is not automatically barred as “mass and indiscriminate” under state welfare regulations when structured and limited to verifying eligibility factors.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit upheld San Diego County’s Project 100% welfare home verification program, ruling that the announced home “walk through” is a Fourth Amendment search but is reasonable under special-needs balancing, and that consent conditioned on benefit eligibility was voluntary; the court also rejected parallel California constitutional and regulatory claims.


Sanchez v. County of San Diego, 464 F.3d 916 (9th Cir. 2006)