Texas will not have to pay, for now, $100K daily in fines related to foster care abuse

Bayliss Wagner, Austin American-Statesman
On May 8, 2017, Grace Kelsoe, a case manager at Helping Hand Home for Children visited the home of a foster care parent. Kelsoe, who has worked as a case manager for three years, said that it's hard to find a more vulnerable population than kids in the foster care system. "It's kind of a basic human right to live with their parents and they don't, and that's for a good reason, but we have to protect them."

Just over a day after a federal judge ordered Texas to pay $100,000 in daily fines for failing to implement court-ordered fixes to its foster care system, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a temporary stay blocking the lower court's order and pausing the state's payments of the fine.

U.S. District Judge Janis Jack ordered the fines Monday evening for the state's repeated failures to timely and fully investigate allegations of abuse in the foster care system, holding a Texas official in contempt of court for a third time in the 13-year-old case.

Fine payments — $50,000 daily for each of two orders the court found the state is flouting — were to go to a trust fund benefiting children in the state's permanent care.

The stay means Texas has a temporary reprieve from being assessed the daily fines until the 5th Circuit Court, located in New Orleans, decides on the merits of the appeal. The case is before Justices Jennifer Elrod and Catharina Haynes, both appointees of former President George W. Bush, as well as Dana Douglas, an appointee of President Joe Biden.

The court gave the plaintiffs, two child welfare advocacy groups, until April 22 to file a brief in the case. The defendants — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Health and Human Services Commissioner Cecile Erwin Young and Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Stephanie Muth — have until April 24 to file a reply.

In its motion requesting an emergency stay Tuesday evening, which Jack denied, the state argued that the Southern District of Texas court is causing "irreparable harm to federal-state comity by holding the Governor-appointed, Senate-confirmed head of one of the largest state agencies in the country (Young) in criminal contempt."

Paul Yetter, a Houston-based attorney who has represented the plaintiffs since the case was filed in 2011, condemned the appeal.

"Rather than certify safe, timely investigations of reports of child abuse and neglect, the state seems determined to avoid responsibility," Yetter wrote to the American-Statesman in an email Tuesday. "This appeal sends a terrible message to Texas children that state leadership just doesn’t care about their safety.”

In her scathing, 427-page ruling Monday, Jack listed dozens of instances in which errors or delays in investigations left children to go without treatment for physical and sexual abuse and allowed their providers to continue problematic behavior unfettered.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

More: Texas appeals $100,000 per day fines for failure to investigate foster care abuse

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Appeals court blocks $100K daily fine against Texas in foster care suit

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