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Judge with ‘highly antagonistic demeanor’ must be removed from foster care case, 5th Circuit says

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 20 Oct 2024 15:47:07 +0000

Judiciary

Judge with ‘highly antagonistic demeanor’ must be removed from foster care case, 5th Circuit says

October 15, 2024, 8:37 am CDT

A federal appeals court has removed a federal judge from foster care litigation against the state of Texas, citing her “highly antagonistic demeanor” against the defendants during a December 2023 contempt hearing. (Image from Shutterstock)

Senior U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack of the Southern District of Texas was ordered removed in an Oct. 11 opinion by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans, report Bloomberg Law, the Texas Tribune and Texas Public Radio.

Jack has become “too personally involved in the proceedings,” the appeals court said.

The 5th Circuit also reversed fines of $100,000 per day that Jack had imposed April 15, 2024, for the state’s alleged failure to implement two remedial orders.

The orders required investigation of allegations of child abuse and neglect in a timely manner for children placed in “permanent managing conservatorship,” which happens when the state cannot find adoptive homes or cannot reunify the children with parents within specified time limits.

The appeals court had stayed the daily fines. Had they been implemented, Texas “would be on the hook for $7.2 million” between the April order and a June compliance hearing, the appeals court said in a footnote.

The 5th Circuit saw the state’s compliance differently than Jack, saying Texas officials have made “significant remedial efforts” in the past several years. The state has already spent $150 million trying to comply with Jack’s remedial decrees and another $60 million on monitors.

As evidence of its compliance, the state said it was hiring more staff members, training them better and implementing policies to hold providers accountable for poor care.

Jack first ruled in 2015 for the plaintiffs, who had challenged the constitutionality of Texas’ foster care system. She awarded “expansive” injunctive relief, the appeals court said.

The 5th Circuit invalidated many aspects of the initial injunction in 2018 and did so in two more opinions after Jack made changes on remand. In its last decision, the 5th Circuit ordered Jack to implement the injunction without further changes, apart from the ones ordered by the 5th Circuit.

Jack has not yet “officially modified” the injunction, the 5th Circuit said. And even though the appeals court “firmly ordered” Jack not to modify the decree, she “imposed extraneous orders” on the state to provide information on COVID-19 vaccine refusals, to expand mental health care and to produce documents not related to the remedial orders, the appeals court said.

“Not only has the district court clearly indicated an intent to continue oversight well into the future,” the 5th Circuit said, “this contempt order seems a harbinger of even more drastic district court micromanagement.”

Jack has “indicated the strong possibility” that she will issue further contempt orders or even place the foster care system in receivership, according to the appeals court.

“As a general rule of law federal judges are not allowed to become permanent de facto superintendents of major state agencies,” the 5th Circuit said. “Nor, under the federalist structure created by the Constitution, is it appropriate for federal court intervention to thwart the state’s self-management, where the state is taking strides to eliminate the abuses that led to the original decree.”

The 5th Circuit said the December hearing happened after Jack “urged and instigated” the plaintiffs for several months to seek contempt. During the hearing, Jack “repeatedly questioned the defendants’ unwillingness to exceed the requirements of the remedial decree,” suggesting that she had “substantial difficulty” moving past previously invalidated remedial orders, the appeals courts said.

“It doesn’t hurt to go over and above” the remedial orders, Jack said during the hearing.

At another point, Jack interrupted a witness to complain that “the state contracts with these people that are not doing their job, and they still keep contracting with them.”

When the witness asked Jack to clarify her question, she replied, “I don’t know if there’s a question. It was more of an irritable rant.”

During testimony by another witness, Jack said, “I don’t know how the state sleeps at night with this. I really don’t.”

Jack’s statements at the contempt hearing and at other times show that she “exhibits a sustained pattern, over the course of months and numerous hearings, of disrespect for the defendants and their counsel but no such attitude toward the plaintiffs’ counsel,” the 5th Circuit said. “The judge’s demeanor exhibits a ‘high degree of antagonism,’ calling into doubt at least ‘the appearance of fairness’ for the state defendants.”

Graham was appointed by former President Bill Clinton. The author of the 5th Circuit panel decision, Judge Edith H. Jones, is an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan.

In a statement published by the Texas Tribune, the state’s heath commission and social services agency said they are pleased that the 5th Circuit recognized their significant efforts.

“We remain committed and are grateful to Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas legislature for their continued support in furthering the well-being of our most vulnerable Texans,” the statement said.

Paul Yetter, a lawyer with Yetter Coleman, one of the attorneys for foster care children, said in a statement the decision was “a sad day for Texas children,” Bloomberg Law reports.

“For over a decade, Judge Jack pushed the state to fix its broken system,” Yetter said. “She deserves a medal for what she’s done. We will keep fighting to ensure these children are safe.”

The case is M.D. v. Abbott.

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Fifth Circuit removes judge from foster system abuse case

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 21:18:13 +0000

Left: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks in the Fiserv Forum on the third night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis., on Wednesday July 17, 2024 (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images). Right: Judge Janis Graham Jack (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas).

A federal judge appointed by Bill Clinton was removed from a high-profile child abuse case this week by a panel of Republican-appointed judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The removal of U.S. District Court Judge Janis Graham Jack came at the urging of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in a long-running case about inadequacies in the Lone Star State’s foster care system.

“Several facts compel bringing this case before a more disinterested tribunal,” the opinion and order authored by Judge Edith Jones reads.

The underlying case is a class action lawsuit against the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). In 2015, Jack found state’s foster care system unconstitutional and imposed hefty fines along with mandating wide-ranging reforms. A team of monitors were also appointed to oversee compliance with the court’s orders. Texas, in turn, serially failed to comply or modernize.

At one point in 2019 Jack threatened to throw state officials in jail and fined the state $50,000 per day for failing to provide around-the-clock supervision to children in large group homes. Multiple foster care facilities were closed, according to the San Antonio Express-News, because even the DFPS commissioner admitted they had been “unsafe for decades.” Court monitors reported at least 23 children died while in the care of foster care shelters and facilities licensed by the Texas government during a period from the summer of 2019 to May 2021. Problems with the system are widely assumed to be ongoing.

Here’s how the appeals court framed the matter:

As this court originally found, the state of Texas had seriously neglected the management of its foster care system, resulting in constitutional violations against vulnerable children that this court affirmed. Nearly a decade has passed since the district court entered its first judgment ordering remedial relief. The state has been under constant, intrusive, and costly surveillance by a team of monitors and the district court ever since.

More Law&Crime coverage: Young sex trafficking victims were allegedly trafficked AGAIN by staff at government-contracted shelter in Texas

On April 15, Jack upped the ante: fining Texas $100,000 per day for certain violations in a contempt order. The district court, however, opened up the possibility of substantial compliance with earlier orders in order to cure the contempt – and avoid paying the fines.

In the appellate court order, the judges said the lower court’s contempt order was essentially nonsensical.

“[M]uch of the April 15 Order squarely focuses on whether the Defendants’ past conduct was in compliance with the Remedial Orders,” the Fifth Circuit says. “The April 15 Order requires the Defendants to pay $100,000 per day until they certify that certain investigations ‘closed from December 4, 2023 until the date of the State’s certification, are substantially compliant with the Remedial Order 3’ and that other ‘open’ investigations’ comply with Remedial Order 10. The Defendants can do nothing to render any already-untimely investigations timely.”

In other words, Texas complained that Jack’s contempt order required a truly impossible task: ensuring that already-shuttered investigations complied with obligations imposed by the district court in the future. The appeals court agreed with this understanding.

The appeals court also said the contempt order – and its associated fines – had become so burdensome that it effectively became transmogrified into criminal contempt – which requires a jury trial.

One particular point of contention, the Fifth Circuit said, was that Jack “urged and instigated” the plaintiffs to “seek contempt” for months before the order was issued in the first place.

In sum, the panel found that Jack had “become too personally involved in the proceedings” and that she expressed “a highly antagonistic demeanor toward” the State of Texas defendants.

Notably, the appellate court also opined that the state “intends to continue improving the foster care system in good faith” and took the judge to task for what they viewed as overreach.

“[A]s a general rule of law federal judges are not allowed to become permanent de facto superintendents of major state agencies,” the court observed. “Nor, under the federalist structure created by the Constitution, is it appropriate for federal court intervention to thwart the state’s self-management, where the state is taking strides to eliminate the abuses that led to the original decree.”

The critique continued at length:

Nor are federal judges even suited, by training or temperament, to manage institutions, personnel, or the provision of vital state services, even if counselled by monitors. In this case particularly, the integrity of oversight may have been further put at risk by the trial court’s creation of a “fund,” based on plaintiffs’ attorneys’ foregoing their court-approved fees, that the court may evidently disburse at its discretion. Federal judges should not be personally allocating resources from the state’s taxpayers for purposes not directly tied to and controlled by the state itself in order to abide by a court decree.

Additionally, the Fifth Circuit chided Jack for her “intemperate conduct on the bench,” including a finding that her “mode of questioning” the state’s objections during hearings was “inappropriate.”

“We have carefully considered the record and the applicable law before concluding that this case must be reassigned to another judge,” the court ruled. “The district judge must be removed.”

Sarah Rumpf contributed to this report.

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Woman accused of burning foster child in hot bath

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 13:50:09 +0000

Inset: Ija Monae Hall. Background: The home where a foster child was allegedly burned in a bath by his foster mother (KWCH).

A Kansas home day care provider is accused of burning her foster child in a hot bath and hitting him hard enough to cause bruising.

Ija Monae Hall, 29, faces a child abuse charge after the boy suffered second-degree burns last week, authorities said. She was arrested on Monday at the Child Advocacy Center, The Wichita Eagle reported.

The incident happened at Hall’s home day care, His Loving Hands Home Childcare, on Sept. 5, officials said.

Details about the case came out in a Kansas Department of Health and Environment Emergency Order of Suspension.

The document said that the child was taken that day to a hospital’s burn center with deep second-degree burns to lower extremities and superficial second-degree burns to his buttocks, thighs, genitalia and feet.

At the hospital, Hall allegedly provided medical staff and law enforcement with “inconsistent statements as to the cause of the injuries.”

The following day, Hall’s two kids were placed into police protective custody and taken to a children’s home.

There, the staff noted that both children needed baths. One child had missing teeth and bruising on his chest and legs, the document said. The other child had a small scratch on his face, red marks on his back, neck, shoulder and knee, and a small bruise on his heel, according to the document.

In a follow-up interview with police days later, Hall admitted to smacking one of them on the back, resulting in bruising and also admitted to making him sit in a hot bathtub, resulting in the burns, the document said.

The Kansas Department of Children and Families (DCF) requested an emergency order to suspend Hall’s license to operate a family child care home — issued in June. The license suspension was immediately granted due to the severity of the case, the document said.

Local CBS affiliate KWCH reported on Friday that she posted bond and was out of custody.

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