Federal appeals court judges question dismissal of R.I. child advocate’s lawsuit
01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, January 6, 2010
By Katie Mulvaney, projo.com
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Journal Staff Writer
BOSTON — A federal appeals court panel that includes retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter appeared perplexed Tuesday by the dismissal of a lawsuit that accuses the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families of widespread abuse and neglect of children in state foster care.

Rhode Island Child Advocate Jametta O. Alston and the New York-based advocacy group Children’s Rights asked the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Senior U.S. District Judge Ronald R. Lagueux’s dismissal of the lawsuit alleging the system was underfunded, understaffed and mismanaged, and that children were being molested, beaten and shuffled from home to home while in state foster care. They argued that Lagueux had used a law intended to guarantee children access to the federal courts instead to bar them from seeking justice.

The DCYF countered that Lagueux was correct in finding that the children’s interests were already being served in state Family Court, where guardians had been appointed to handle each child’s case.

“The District Court judge did find these … children have the ability to have their voices heard,” Asst. Attorney General Brenda D. Baum said.

But those arguments did not sit well with the appeals court judges. Lagueux’s ruling seemed to chronicle years of mistreatment of children in state care, only to reject the three “next friends” chosen to represent the children in bringing the lawsuit in U.S. District Court, noted Senior Judge Norman H. Stahl.

Didn’t Lagueux have the duty to then name appropriate people to take on the children’s federal case? Stahl asked. A minor may only bring suit when represented by a “next friend” or guardian appointed by the court. By dismissing the case, the judge is essentially saying “what is going on is good enough?” Stahl said.

Souter echoed that reasoning. “He’s throwing up his hands and throwing the case out,” said Souter, who returned to the appeals court for the first time since his retirement.

The record, Baum said, is thick with Family Court documents that show active engagement in the children’s cases. Souter replied that Family Court involvement is not in question. What is, he said, is whether “insufficient things are being done to protect children.”

Alston’s case may target the DCYF, Baum said, but Family Court is also involved in decision making. “It can’t be limited to them.”

The case, Souter said, boils down to whether the Family Court and the DCYF are doing the best they can. Alston is claiming, he said, that the next friends are needed because the system “does not provide minimum things that need to be provided.”

Susan Lambiase, associate director of Children’s Rights, argued that the Family Court guardians were not appropriate to represent the children in federal court because they were part of the system the suit seeks to overhaul.

She asked the appeals court to develop a test to gauge whether a next friend is qualified not on how close he or she is to the child, but on whether the person has a “good-faith interest in seeking justice” on a child’s behalf.

“(The next friends) are not ideologues,” Lambiase said. “They are here on behalf of the children.”

Alston and Children’s Rights filed the suit in 2007 on behalf of the 3,000 children in state custody following the death of T.J. Wright, a Woonsocket toddler beaten to death by his aunt and her boyfriend while in DCYF care. The suit initially named 10 children as plaintiffs and sought class-action status, saying their civil rights were being violated.

Alston appointed “next friends” to represent the children, including one child’s former foster mother, another’s past school psychologist and a Brown University professor who specializes in child maltreatment.

Lagueux dismissed the suit, saying Alston had no authority to proceed because the children were already under state Family Court jurisdiction. The three “next friends,” he said, had limited or nonexistent relationships with the children.

Alston wept after Tuesday’s arguments. “This is the first time I’ve heard judges understand the plight of children in their care,” she said. “It’s the first time I’ve seen how facts and justice can blend.”

Jim Lee, chief of the attorney general’s civil division, was more circumspect. “I think they see it as a serious case, and they’re going to give it serious consideration.” He was accompanied by Kevin Aucoin, chief counsel of the DCYF.

kmulvane@projo.com

14 Oct 2009
Rhode Island Kids’ Right to Challenge Poor Foster Care Treatment in Federal Court Well-Established, Advocates Say
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The state of Rhode Island has failed to provide a legal rationale supporting a federal court’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit brought to reform the state’s failing child welfare system.

BOSTON, MA — Abused and neglected children in the custody of the dysfunctional Rhode Island child welfare system have a well-established right to challenge their poor treatment in federal court, say state and national child welfare advocates seeking to reinstate a lawsuit brought on the children’s behalf to reform the system — and the state has failed to provide a legal rationale supporting the case’s dismissal.

In their final brief (PDF) to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston in support of their appeal, Rhode Island Child Advocate Jametta Alston and the national child advocacy organization Children’s Rights rejected the state’s arguments in recent filings that the lower court judge was correct to dismiss the case in April 2009 because the adults chosen to stand in for the seven children named as plaintiffs in the case did not have ongoing relationships with the children.

They also dismissed as “histrionic” the state’s charges that their campaign to reform the Rhode Island system represents a challenge to the authority of the state Family Court.

“We seek the reform of a child welfare system that has badly harmed the seven children in whose names we have brought this case, and thousands more like them who continue to suffer as a result of failures at every level of the Rhode Island child welfare system,” said Susan Lambiase, associate director of Children’s Rights. “This is not a challenge to the Family Court or the attorneys chosen to represent the children in that setting, but an effort to improve all aspects of the system in which the Family Court operates, and to produce dramatically better results for all of the children and families who depend on the system.”

The Rhode Island Child Advocate not only has the explicit statutory authority to bring lawsuits on behalf of the plaintiff children, the advocates write in today’s brief, but also has joined with counsel from within and outside the state who together bring vast experience in successfully improving the lives of children through actions like this one.

Furthermore, they write, the children have a right to use the federal court to vindicate their constitutional right to be free from harm in state custody. “The lower court failed to provide any proper basis for refusing to hear their claims and its decision should be reversed.”

The advocates filed the class action, known as Sam and Tony M. v. Carcieri, in June 2007, seeking widespread reforms on behalf of the approximately 3,000 abused and neglected children dependent on the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF). The children’s complaint alleged that the state violates their rights under the Constitution and federal law by failing to provide them with basic safety, protection, and care — often resulting in serious harm.

The district court dismissed the case in April 2009, ruling that the adults serving as the children’s legal representatives, or “Next Friends,” were inadequate because they were not the children’s family court law guardians and did not have current relationships with the children.

Alston and Children’s Rights appealed that decision in August 2009, and a broad national coalition of 15 children’s legal aid organizations and child welfare experts and the American Civil Liberties Union have signed on in support of their appeal.

The child advocates said that the district court had based its decision to throw out the children’s case upon multiple erroneous readings of the law, and the state had not supplied any acceptable legal rationale to justify the court’s dismissal. “Like fitting a square peg in a round hole, defendants were unable to contort the lower court’s flawed opinion into one which establishes the legal and factual grounds necessary to dismiss the children’s federal civil rights claims on the basis of allegedly inadequate next friends,” they wrote.

In addition to the Rhode Island Child Advocate and Children’s Rights, Vernon Winters of the international law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Rhode Island attorney John Dineen serve as co-counsel on the case.

For more information about Children’s Rights’ campaign to reform the Rhode Island child welfare system, including the full text of the 2007 complaint and today’s brief, please visit www.childrensrights.org/rhodeisland.