New York State’s child welfare agency routinely delays appeals by parents to remove their names from a statewide database of people accused of child maltreatment, often causing them to lose out on employment and kinship caregiver opportunities, according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday.
Parents in the suit say they have have been improperly included in the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment and forced to endure an appeals process that can last months and sometimes years, the class-action lawsuit alleges. This occurs even though a state law mandates that a review must be completed within 90 days.
These significant delays during attempts to “clear their names’’ deprive parents of “their constitutionally protected interest in obtaining employment and fostering or adopting children,’’ in addition to burdening them with the “stigma of alleged child abuse,’’ the plaintiffs allege.
Most parents who challenge their state registry listings win their appeals and are able to seal or change the outcome of their case — more than 70% of parents won such appeals in 2021, according to state data. The high success rate of appeals underscores the need to promptly clear parents’ names, the suit alleges.
Commissioner DaMia Harris-Madden, who leads the state’s Office of Children and Families, is one of the named defendants in the lawsuit. Poe et al. v. Harris-Madden was filed in a federal district court in lower Manhattan by the Family Justice Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and other parent defense firms.
In a statement to The Imprint, a spokesperson from Harris-Madden’s agency said officials are reviewing the complaint.
“We take very seriously our duty to carefully review and rule on these appeals as part of our responsibility to the children of New York,” spokesperson Daniel Marans said.
One of the three plaintiffs, a Brooklyn mother identified in court documents by the pseudonym Veronica Voe, has been unable to look for work for a year while waiting for a “fair hearing” to appeal her report.
“The lengthy delay in the appeal process has added immense stress and leaves me concerned about the long-term impact on my reputation,” Voe, who has a 6-year-old daughter, said in a press release.
The statewide central register hotline receives over 100,000 reports of suspected child mistreatment every year. After a report comes in, Child Protective Specialists conduct an investigation to determine whether it is valid. If they find enough evidence, that report is deemed “indicated” — meaning officials found it likely that abuse or neglect occurred — and the parent’s name is listed in the state’s child maltreatment database, which is maintained by the Office of Children and Families.
State law requires that certain employers and licensing agencies, such as foster and adoption agencies, check an applicant’s name against the database. Those listed are barred from many jobs in education, child care or medical fields, and from becoming kinship caregivers or foster parents.
The criticism is not new for the state children’s services agency — a group of parents sued the agency over similar delays more than 20 years ago, and reached a settlement that laid out new deadlines. But the lengthy wait times have persisted, causing severe financial distress for people with “indicated” reports.
According to the state’s own data, its child welfare agency took more than a year to complete a review of 8,000 of the 30,000 cases handled between 2020 and mid-2025.
Attorneys representing parents embroiled in child maltreatment investigations said such delays disproportionately impact Black and brown parents.
“Child abuse registries function like a shadow criminal record, locking mothers of color out of jobs and opportunities long before any fair process occurs,” Aditi Fruitwala, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a press release. “That is not child protection. It is systemic injustice.”
The second named plaintiff in the suit, a Latino father from Queens, was unaware that his name was in the database until his employer initiated a background check. He could not accept a job as a medical caseworker for months due to the delay in his appeal. Nearly two and half years will have passed between the investigation and his hearing.
CPS investigated the third plaintiff, a Black mother of two, after she tried to separate two children who were fighting at the daycare where she worked as a teacher. In the year she has spent waiting for an appeal hearing, she has been barred from any paid work in childcare or education.
