The 2010 Foster Care Reform Litigation Docket (“the Docket”) provides basic information on 81 child welfare reform cases nationwide that are currently in active litigation, a pending settlement agreement, or are significant in some other respect. The Docket also describes a small sampling of damages cases.
In addition to being indexed by status, cases are indexed by alphabetical order, U.S. state, substantive topics, and procedural topics.
Each case summary contains identifying information, citations, contact information for current plaintiffs’ counsel, brief summaries of the issues raised by the case, procedural history, and the current status.
Many cases include the Clearinghouse Review number, which allows access to all pleadings in the case. Otherwise, pleadings are available through the plaintiffs’ attorneys, whose contact information is provided in the Docket.
Criteria
The cases included in the Docket are restricted to those that involve factual allegations and legal claims addressing recurrent, systemic problems in a state or local child welfare system, and seek relief affecting children and families beyond the named plaintiffs. Damages cases listed in the Docket address systemic problems and likely had or will have an impact beyond the named plaintiff. This year we have removed older cases filed before the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), Public Law 105-89, 111 Stat. 2115 (1997), that do not have a published court opinion or active settlement agreement. Also, because foster care reform cases involve government defendants who frequently change, the names of some cases are different from the last version of the Docket. As a result, we have tried to cross-reference the new titles throughout.
The Docket collectively refers to the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, P. L. 96-272, 94 Stats. 500, and its amending statutes (including the Adoption & Safe Families Act of 1997) as Title IV-E of the Social Security Act ("Title IV-E"). Most of the lawsuits described in the Docket seek to enforce the provisions of Title IV-E and/or the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Currently, the Docket contains descriptions of 26 child welfare reform settlement agreements being implemented in various states throughout the U.S. In addition, seven foster care reform cases are currently being litigated in various courts.
Venue
These cases are generally filed in federal court. However, more reform cases – especially those that also involve damages claims – have been pursued in state court as the federal bench has become less hospitable and defendants have increasingly relied on raising federal procedural defenses. The vast majority of reform cases are multi-issue, rather than single-issue, litigation. Nonetheless, even single-issue litigation can and has lead to broad-ranging settlements.
Litigation is costly. Rather then proceed to trial, government defendants eventually settle child welfare reform cases, and locate dollars that they previously argued were unavailable. Unfortunately, defendants have generally been well aware of the significant problems giving rise to the litigation many years before the case is ever settled.
Disclaimer
We have made every effort to include all relevant cases in the Docket, and to provide accurate and up-to-date information on each case. In some cases, plaintiffs’ counsel who originally brought the case, or made significant contributions to it, are no longer involved. For that reason, we have only listed those attorneys who are working on the case or with the organization or firm primarily responsibility for the case. However, errors and omissions are nearly inevitable, and we appreciate receiving your corrections or updates. Please contact Leecia Welch at (510) 835-8098, extension 3023, or via email at lwelch(at)youthlaw.org.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Andrew Argyris, Nadine Gartner, Victoria Valentine, Luke Trares, and Katina Ancar for their help in updating the Docket and Ethel L. Oden-Brown for her assistance with production. We would also like to express our deepest gratitude to the attorneys whose cases are included in the Docket and who took time from their busy schedules to respond to our requests for information.
