M. D. Ex Rel. Stukenberg v. Abbott
907 F.3d 237 (2018)
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Rule of Law:
A state violates foster children's Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process right to personal security and reasonably safe living conditions when it acts with deliberate indifference to systemic policies and practices, such as maintaining excessive caseworker caseloads and deficient abuse investigation procedures, that it knows create a substantial risk of serious physical and psychological harm.
Facts:
- The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has legal custody of children placed in its Permanent Managing Conservatorship (PMC) after they cannot be reunified with their families due to abuse or neglect.
- Children in PMC receive less frequent court reviews, planning meetings, and advocacy from attorneys ad litem or CASA volunteers compared to children in temporary custody.
- DFPS has no official policy limiting the number of cases a caseworker can handle. As of 2014, nearly half of all caseworkers managed 21 or more children, significantly exceeding the 12-15 recommended by the Child Welfare League of America.
- The high caseloads contribute to an annual caseworker turnover rate of over 25%, forcing children to be assigned to a revolving door of caseworkers with whom they cannot build trust.
- DFPS's record-keeping is fragmented across multiple, un-synced electronic databases and paper files, making it extremely difficult for caseworkers to access a child’s complete medical, placement, and abuse history.
- The Residential Child Care Licensing (RCCL) division, which investigates abuse allegations, was found by internal reviews to have an error rate of over 64% in cases where the outcome was initially marked 'Unable to Determine'.
- DFPS does not centrally track or aggregate data on child-on-child abuse, instead classifying such incidents as 'negligent supervision' by the caregiver. This prevents caseworkers from easily identifying children with a history of perpetrating abuse when making placement decisions.
- Due to a shortage of available placements, approximately 40% of children are placed outside their home region, and over 35% of sibling groups are separated.
Procedural Posture:
- A certified class of minor children in the Permanent Managing Conservatorship of DFPS sued the Governor of Texas and other state officials in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, seeking injunctive relief.
- The district court initially certified a class, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated and remanded that certification.
- On remand, the district court re-certified a general class and several subclasses. The State's appeal of this certification order was dismissed by the Fifth Circuit as untimely.
- After a two-week bench trial, the district court found that DFPS's policies concerning caseloads, monitoring and oversight, placement array, and foster group homes violated the plaintiffs' substantive due process rights.
- The district court issued a permanent injunction ordering sweeping reforms to the Texas foster care system.
- The State (appellants) appealed the district court's liability determination and its permanent injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
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Issue:
Do the Texas foster care system's policies and practices regarding caseworker caseloads, monitoring and oversight, placement array, and foster group homes violate the substantive due process rights of children in its permanent custody by exposing them to an unreasonable risk of serious harm?
Opinions:
Majority - Edith Brown Clement
Partially Yes and Partially No. The State's policies regarding caseworker caseloads and monitoring and oversight violate the children's substantive due process rights, but its policies regarding placement array and foster group homes do not. The State was deliberately indifferent to the substantial risk of harm created by its caseload management and oversight policies. For decades, DFPS was aware from numerous internal and external reports that excessive caseloads, high turnover, deficient abuse investigations, and a failure to track child-on-child abuse created a 'cycle of crisis' that endangered children. The State's responses were not reasonable, as they failed to address the root causes. However, the harms associated with placement array, such as placing children out-of-region or separating siblings, do not rise to the level of a constitutional violation. Furthermore, the State's 'Foster Care Redesign' program was a reasonable attempt to address placement issues, negating deliberate indifference. The claims regarding foster group homes also fail because the primary danger cited—a lack of 24-hour supervision—was already being remedied.
Concurring in part and dissenting in part - Unspecified in text, but a separate opinion from another panel judge
Yes. The district court's findings of liability for all challenged policies—including placement array and foster group homes—should be affirmed, as should its entire remedial injunction. The majority fails to apply the proper deferential standard of review to the district court's factual findings and instead substitutes its own judgment, showing an 'indulgent deference to DFPS.' The evidence overwhelmingly showed that the state's placement array and foster group home policies also created an unreasonable risk of serious harm, and the majority wrongly minimizes these dangers as merely 'suboptimal.' Given DFPS's two-decade history of intransigence and refusal to reform despite repeated warnings from state officials, the district court's comprehensive injunction, including caseload caps derived from DFPS's own data, was a necessary and narrowly tailored remedy to correct the deep-seated, systemic constitutional violations.
Analysis:
This decision clarifies the scope of substantive due process rights for children in state custody, specifically in the context of systemic challenges to a foster care system. The court distinguishes between core operational failures that directly and obviously endanger children (caseloads, abuse investigations), which can support a finding of deliberate indifference, and resource-allocation or policy choices (placement distribution, housing models), which are less likely to be found unconstitutional, especially if the state has made some remedial efforts. The ruling signals that while federal courts will intervene to correct long-standing, known dangers, they are reluctant to micromanage state agencies or impose remedies that prescribe 'best practices' beyond what is minimally required by the Constitution. It sets a precedent for how future institutional reform litigation in this area will be analyzed, particularly regarding the high bar for proving deliberate indifference and the narrow tailoring required for injunctive relief.
