Federal Appeals Court Decision Sends Child Welfare Reform Case Back to Lower Court

PRESS RELEASE

Child advocates can continue fighting for New Mexico's foster care children

(New York City, January 8, 2002) Four months after it upheld a lower court decision dismissing a long-standing child welfare reform lawsuit, Joseph A. v. New Mexico Department of Human Services, et al., a federal appeals court reversed itself on Monday and sent the case back to the federal district court in Albuquerque.

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"This is a real victory for New Mexico's foster children," said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of the New York-based national advocacy organization Children's Rights and co-counsel in the case with Albuquerque attorney Robert Levy. "For a long time, the state has used every possible legal argument to avoid facing up to their neglect of helpless children. They've just lost their most recent attempt. We are going to continue to represent these children, and fight for their legal rights, until the state provides them with the services to which they are entitled."

In a decision with far-reaching consequences for lawsuits in federal courts to enforce civil rights and entitlements granted by federal statutes as a condition of sending federal funds to the states, the appeals panel had ruled that such suits were barred by the 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The panel had also ruled that the settlement in this case would interfere with state court proceedings and that a federal doctrine of "abstention" prevented the federal courts from enforcing the settlement.

The case seeks reform of adoption practices in the state's child welfare system, as well as such system-wide reforms as requiring adequate training and qualifications of social workers and the development of a computerized management information system. It was first filed in 1980, and has been in the federal appeals court several times. This most recent legal battle began in 1999, when the foster children who are plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit charged the state with violating provisions of a settlement agreement, which had been renegotiated in 1998. The state agency, New Mexico's Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD), countered by asking the federal district court to dismiss the case on legal grounds.

The federal district court granted the state's request, ending federal court oversight over the provisions of the 1998 agreement, and the appeals court upheld that decision last September. The plaintiff foster children asked that either the federal appeals panel reconsider its ruling, or that all the judges on the federal circuit hear the case.

In the decision issued on Monday, the federal appeals court reconsidered its earlier ruling on the 11th Amendment issue, reversed itself, and found that the doctrine of sovereign immunity did not bar this lawsuit against the state of New Mexico. The court also ruled that the district court had been wrong in dismissing the entire case on abstention grounds and sent the case back to the district court for further proceedings, stating that "the fact that one provision [of the settlement agreement] may not be enforceable in light of Younger [the abstention doctrine] does not necessarily warrant voiding the entire consent decree."

"I'm really pleased that the 10th Circuit reconsidered," said Albuquerque attorney Robert Levy. "I believe that the children in foster care deserve the attention of a federal district court judge, and we're going to see that they get it."

Children's Rights works throughout the United States in partnership with national and local experts, advocates and government officials to document the needs of children in the care of child welfare systems. Children's Rights helps develop realistic solutions and, where necessary, uses the power of litigation to ensure that reform takes place.