Appeals court orders some fixes in state foster care

It rejects other measures ordered by federal judge in suit against Texas

DALLAS — A federal appeals court says Texas must make improvements to abuse investigations within its foster care system and make sure workers have manageable caseloads, but also struck down dozens of other measures ordered by a judge.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the ruling Thursday in a yearslong case focused on children in the state’s longterm care. U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack had ordered sweeping changes earlier this year.

Jack’s order followed a December 2015 opinion in which she ruled the system unconstitutionally broken and said children labeled permanent wards of the state “almost uniformly leave state custody more damaged than when they entered.”

The appeals court judges said they understood Jack’s frustration with the state failing to fix problems and agreed that “remedial action is appropriate.” But they said her order went “well beyond” what’s necessary for constitutional compliance.

So while the appeals court said Texas was “deliberately indifferent” to the risk of harm posed by high caseloads and ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to come up with guidelines for manageable caseloads, the judges nixed Jack’s instruction for all sexualized children — aggressor or victim — to be placed in a single-child home. They also disagreed with her elimination of foster group homes, which allowed 12 children, including the caregivers’ own, in a home.

The appeals court noted the state has “repeatedly refused” to work on corrective policies with experts appointed by Jack to craft reforms. The appeals court also writes that Texas “has had a wealth of information at its disposal detailing the structural deficiencies in its foster care system” since long before the lawsuit was filed and “it has failed to take meaningful remedial action.”

The case was filed in 2011 by a New York advocacy group, Children’s Rights, along with Texas lawyers on behalf of about a dozen current and former foster youth.

During a trial in the class-action lawsuit in 2014, former foster children testified of abuse as they were shuffled from placement to placement.

The lead lawyer for the youth, Paul Yetter, called the appeals court ruling a “huge win for Texas children,” saying the changes to caseloads and improvements in abuse investigations will make a difference.

Kayleigh Lovvorn, a spokeswoman for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, says, “While the program still faces challenges, the Fifth Circuit upheld significant parts of the program as constitutional while finding that the district court engaged in judicial overreach in entering an overbroad and impractical injunction.”