Minnesota Caretaker Gets Lifetime Ban for Crime She Didn't Commit

[Kamaji]

Minnesota Caretaker Gets Lifetime Ban for Crime She Didn't Commit

Even if background check applicants are guilty of wrongdoing, imposing lifetime bans on gainful employment is not a good policy.

DARYL JAMES AND MIKE GREENBERG
7.31.2023

People deserve a presumption of innocence, but they don't always get it in Minnesota. When Ifrah Yassin applied for government permission to work at a group home for adults with intellectual disabilities near Minneapolis, the state Department of Human Services told her no.

Not now. Not ever.

Despite persistent staffing shortages at facilities like these nationwide, a mandatory background check resulted in a lifetime ban for Yassin. No matter how long she lives or where she goes in Minnesota, her name will remain in a do-not-hire database that works like a no-fly list for health care professionals.

The reason? Regulators determined by their own "preponderance of the evidence" that Yassin had committed aggravated robbery in her youth. Fact-finders satisfy this burden of proof when they establish that someone is guilty with more than 50 percent likelihood—essentially a coin toss. Yet these determinations are normally made in courthouses, not administrative offices.

How the Department of Human Services reached its conclusion is unclear. Regulators have refused to give Yassin any original evidence. The police briefly arrested her and her friends on suspicion of robbery in 2013, but officers promptly released the young women after realizing their accuser had provided a false name. The case went nowhere.

No charges. No trial. No conviction.

Normally in the United States, this means innocence. The fact is not lost on Yassin, a refugee drawn to the constitutional promises of due process and equal protection. "I came to America from Somalia in search of a better life," she says. "I never thought that I'd end up being punished for the rest of my life for something I didn't do."

The injustice is not the first Yassin has endured. In 2011, when she was just 20 years old, she faced false allegations of witness tampering from a St. Paul police sergeant who led a yearslong investigation that has since been discredited. One federal appeals court accused the sergeant of "lies and manipulation," and another federal appeals court accused the sergeant of pushing a "fictitious story."

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Source:  https://reason.com/2023/07/31/minnesota-caretaker-gets-lifetime-ban-for-crime-she-didnt-commit/

[Smokin Joe]

Sounds like someone might have a lawsuit. If the Department of Human Services is indeed a government agency, and has deprived her of 'life, liberty, or property' without due process of law, in effect punishing her for a crime without so much as facing her accuser or being allowed to see the 'evidence' against her, she may be able to collect: quo warranto, habeas mandamus, and all that..

Without any criminal proceedings against her indicating guilt, the Department of Human Services should not be able to effectively impose sentence.