If you read the NH Child Protection Act (RSA 169-C:16), you will come across the following power granted to the courts.

III. The court may at any time order the child, parents, guardian, custodian, or household member subject to the petition or ex parte order, to submit to a mental health evaluation, or undergo a physical examination or treatment, with a written assessment being provided to the court. The court may order that the child, who is the subject of the petition or the family or both be evaluated by a mental health center or any other psychiatrist, psychologist or psychiatric social worker or family therapist or undergo physical examination or treatment with a written assessment provided to the court. Evaluations performed at the Philbrook center may occur only upon receiving prior approval for such evaluation from the commissioner of the department of health and human services, or designee.

Fortunately, there is an out, but you have to convince the judge who ordered the evaluation:

IV. If the child, the parent, guardian or custodian objects to the mental health evaluation, he shall object in writing to the court having jurisdiction within 5 days after notification of the time and place of said evaluation. The court shall hold a hearing to consider the objection prior to ordering said evaluation. Upon good cause shown, the court may excuse the child, the parent, guardian or custodian from the provisions of this section.

It would seem that the authors never heard the following references and quotes in defense of the Right to privacy.

The right to be alone - the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized man.

Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.

Public utilities Comm'n v. Pollack 343 U.S. 451 (1952)

The Fourth Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable government intrusion.

Potter Stewart (former U.S. Supreme Ct. Justice) New York Times, March 6, 1961

All men are born equally free and independent; therefore, all government of right originates from the people, is founded in consent, and instituted for the general good.

Article 1, Part 1 New Hampshire Constitution

All men have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights - among which are, the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting, property; and, in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by this state on account of race, creed, color, sex or national origin.

Article 2, Part 1 New Hampshire Constitution

All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent and indefeasible rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring, possessing and protecting property and reputation, and of pursuing their own happiness.

Article 1, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution

Compelling a psychological examination in this context is nothing more or less than social engineering in derogation of constitutional rights, and where, as here, there is an abundance of information about the ability of the parent to be a parent, there is no state interest, much less a compelling state interest, in the ordering of parental psychological examinations. In fact, we find such state intervention frightening in its Orwellian aspect. It is one thing for the mother to agree to psychological evaluation and to voluntarily undergo instruction in self-improvement, but it is quite another for the state, in the exercise of paternalistic might, to order a psychological evaluation in violation of the mother's constitutional rights, presumably upon pain of imprisonment for contempt of court. The constitution is not a mere policy statement to be overridden by a sociological scheme for the improvement of society. The mother, alas, may be her own worst enemy and her shortcomings as a parent may result in the permanent removal of her children; nonetheless, the mother remains a free person, and her power to assert her constitutional right to privacy is not diminished merely because the representatives of the state think it is ill advised.

We conclude, as we did in In Re B, that there is no governmental interest sufficient to negate the mother's assertion of her right of privacy.

The order of Superior Court is reversed.

In the Matter of T.R., J.M, and C.R. J-92-1997, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Eastern District, June 23, 1999, interpreting Article 1, Section 1 of the PA Constitution, similar to Article 1 and Article 2 of the NH Constitution.

The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 516-522 (dissenting opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment, in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers "in any house" in time of peace without the consent of the owner, is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Fifth Amendment, in its Self-Incrimination Clause, enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." ... The principles laid down in this opinion [by Lord Camden in Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029] affect the very essence of constitutional liberty and security. They reach farther than the concrete form of the case then before the Court, with its adventitious circumstances; they apply to all invasions on the part of the government and its employes of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life. It is not the breaking of his doors, and the rummaging of his drawers, that constitutes the essence of the offence; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty and private property, where that right has never been forfeited by his conviction of some public offence -- it is the invasion of this sacred right which underlies and constitutes the essence of Lord Camden's judgment. Breaking into a house and opening boxes and drawers are circumstances of aggravation; but any forcible and compulsory extortion of a man's own testimony or of his private papers to be used as evidence to convict him of crime or to forfeit his goods is within the condemnation of that judgment. In this regard, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments run almost into each other.

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)

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Last updated 1999 September 1.