People who get welfare in San Diego County must continue to let fraud investigators into their homes to look around if they want to collect benefits after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to review a legal challenge that called the visits unconstitutional searches.

Without commenting, Supreme Court justices rejected a request to review the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals September ruling that upheld the in-home visits. The appeals court's 2-1 ruling and the Supreme Court's decision not to review it means the case is over.

San Diego County officials, who have been conducting the in-home visits since 1997, even when applicants were not suspected of fraud, welcomed the Supreme Court's decision. They say the visits prevented $470,000 worth of fraud in 2006.

"We have always believed this was a legitimate program and that our employees were not violating anybody's rights," said county attorney Ellen Pilsecker. "Right now, that has been vindicated."

But Eric Isaacson, the attorney who asked for the Supreme Court's intervention, called the decision an "assault on the poor" and said that people looking for money to survive were forced to give up their rights to privacy.

"Law enforcement agents with shiny metal badges that say, 'DA's office, chief prosecutor, fraud division' … come to the house, flash the badge and say, 'Open the closet,' " said Attorney Eric Isaacson. "They go through the bedroom closets and the bathrooms, the medicine cabinets … and the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that is not a search? What the hell is it?"

Cathy Tague, a section manager with the San Diego County District Attorney's office, said the county typically denied welfare benefits if applicants balked at the visits.

Tague said the visits were a "continuation of the application process" for welfare recipients. Welfare applicants are told to expect the visits, but they're not told when investigators would show up.

She said the intent of the visits was to check out the applicants' home, to see if the applicants actually lived there, as a way to protect against welfare fraud.

"We sit down with the applicant and go over some of the eligibility questions with the worker, to make sure they don't have a bank account or additional cars," Tague said. "If we feel the need, we'll ask to take a look around at the house, to see their things and their children's things -- to establish their residency."

Still, Isaacson said the visits did constitute an unreasonable search for people who were not suspected of fraudulent intent.

"What would you feel like if they were going through your home?" he said. "What if you filed your income tax report and the IRS came and demanded to go through your bedroom?"

The class-action challenge to the county's system had been coursing through the courts for four years. Six county residents, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit to challenge the county's welfare application system in 2003.

Isaacson said that case never went to court, but was instead decided by a summary judgment -- which asks for a ruling before going to trial -- that upheld the in-home visits.

Ironically, even though the Ninth Circuit Court ruled in favor of the county and upheld the in-home visits , several of the court's judges said the ruling was wrong.

Originally, a three-judge panel was chosen to hear the case, and the majority voted 2-1 to uphold the in-home visits, saying the practice did not constitute an unreasonable search and was done with an applicant's consent.

Isaacson said he appealed to ask a larger collection of the 27-judge Ninth Circuit to re-hear the issue, but his petition needed the approval of 14 judges, and received just seven.

However, those seven judges sharply criticized the majority ruling, saying it "strikes an unprecedented blow at the core of Fourth Amendment protections."

The judges wrote that "San Diego's program requires destitute, often disabled, persons and their families to forfeit all rights to privacy to qualify for welfare. The government's general interest in preventing fraud cannot justify such highly intrusive searches of homes where no grounds for suspicion exists."

Isaacson said there was still a chance that the U.S. Supreme Court could eventually debate the issue. But, he said, that would only happen if a similar case was heard by another U.S. District Court in another state, and that court disagreed with the Ninth Circuit's ruling.

- Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com.