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A few weeks ago, child protective services separated Pete Buttigieg’s 4-year-old twins from him after an anonymous caller made unsupported allegations in an apparent swatting incident. People of all political persuasions should be outraged that this happened—and plenty were—but they should not be surprised. Weaponizing CPS by making false allegations is all too common. And that’s because CPS enables harassment by throwing common sense—and the law—out the window when someone makes accusations involving a child. Current CPS practices allow specious accusations to hurt not only parents, but the children they are meant to protect.

An abusive ex, a disgruntled neighbor—anyone with an axe to grind—can trigger an invasive CPS investigation that throws a family into turmoil and may lead to a traumatic family separation. An accuser can call again and again, and CPS will conduct another investigation each time. In all but two states, allegations can be anonymous, making it impossible to hold repeat harassers accountable.

But the problem runs far deeper than intentional harassment. The child protection system is the largest, most invasive arm of government that systematically flouts constitutional protections without challenge. The legal constraints on police and immigration agents are hotly contested—in courtrooms and in the court of public opinion. In stark contrast, it is shocking how little discussion there is of the enormous power of CPS, and how little understanding there is of families’ rights during investigations, particularly among the people who are subject to these invasions. Many CPS agents do not even know that constitutional limits apply to the actions they take daily, while parents report that they are treated as guilty until they prove themselves innocent.

Behind the seemingly benign knock on the door is a system that has expanded exponentially over the last 50 years in ways no one planned. A reporting system that was originally designed to address intentional physical abuse now encourages people to report any perceived shortcoming in the care of children. Reports routinely include aspects of parenting on which reasonable people disagree, such as how old a child should be to play unsupervised, or that reflect a parents’ lack of resources instead of any intentional misconduct. Rather than provide the type of social safety net that other affluent democracies do, the United States leaves parents without support, and then encourages accusations of parental deficiency to be........

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