Advocates seek restoration of federal judge removed from long-running foster care case

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court was asked Monday to reconsider its decision to overturn an expensive contempt finding and remove a district judge from a lawsuit over conditions within Texas’ struggling foster care system.

A panel of three 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges ruled Oct. 11 that U.S. District Judge Janis Jack’s contempt ruling and $100,000-per-day fine violated the court’s constitutional limits of power over individual states.

The appeals court panel also said Jack had disrespected the state and its attorneys during the long-running case.

Attorneys for the child advocates in the case disagreed and on Monday asked for a hearing before all 17 full-time members of the New Orleans-based appeals court. Their filing said the decision by judges Edith Jones, Edith Brown Clement and Cory Wilson conflicted with precedent in a case involving vulnerable children.

“Removing the district judge with deep institutional knowledge poses great risks to the entire plaintiff class of children by further delaying reform,” the filing said. The state had not yet filed a reply as of Monday evening.

The case began in 2011 with a lawsuit over foster care conditions at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

Since 2019, court-appointed monitors have released periodic reports on DFPS’ progress toward eliminating threats to the foster children’s safety.

A report earlier this year cited progress in staff training but continued weaknesses in responding to investigations into abuse and neglect allegations, including those made by children.

In one case, plaintiffs say, a girl was left in the same, now-closed residential facility for a year while 12 separate investigations piled up around allegations that she had been raped by a worker there.

Texas has about 9,000 children in permanent state custody for factors that include the loss of caregivers, abuse at home or health needs that parents alone can’t meet.