In 2019, a federal judge permitted Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services to exit court oversight stemming from a class-action lawsuit called Brian A. that had been filed nearly two decades before.
Six years later, litigators are again suing the state agency, saying it regressed rapidly after the lawsuit ended.
“It is very troubling that Tennessee turned its back on protecting children after the Brian A. lawsuit ended,” said Marcia Lowry, who led the nonprofit Children’s Rights when it first sued Tennessee, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. Lowry now leads A Better Childhood, another nonprofit litigation firm, which has brought this lawsuit on behalf of 13 Tennessee children.
Brian A. was filed in May of 2000.
“At the time, the situation for kids in foster care in Tennessee was dire,” Children’s Rights former litigation director and current Chief Program Officer Ira Lustbader wrote, in an Imprint op-ed published when the state exited the lawsuit in 2019. “They were being kept in overcrowded emergency shelters for weeks, moved abruptly from placement to placement, denied contact with siblings and their home communities, and unnecessarily warehoused in inappropriate group facilities.”
He hailed the “power of the courts” as a catalyst for reform in Tennessee, but cautioned that agency leaders, lawmakers and advocates “surely need to fight to keep the system transparent, accountable and fully funded. But the roadmap is there.”
The 74-page complaint filed this week alleges that things went awry.
“This foster care system got better when the state was under a court order, but those efforts disappeared after court oversight ended,” Lowry said. “It is sad to think that Tennessee foster children have to fight this fight again.”
The children included in the lawsuit range in age from one to 16. Their accounts underline a number of specific allegations in the complaint that include putting children in placements without basic necessities, frequent moves within the system, and a failure to serve kids with disabilities and to recruit and retain enough workers.
The Department of Children’s Services (DCS) referred News Channel 5 Nashville to the state attorney general’s office for comment, who then declined to do so.
In October 2023, Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R) co-chaired a hearing on the human rights of foster youth with Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff (D), which largely just examined issues with Georgia’s system.
But in her opening statement, Blackburn noted that she sent a letter to her state’s child welfare agency in February 2023, expressing concern about reports the year before of substandard care for some of the state’s foster youth.
Since that letter, she said at the hearing, the agency had gone through a “complete and total overhaul” under the leadership of DCS Commissioner Margie Quin, who Blackburn said had done a “phenomenal job.”
A month after the hearing, News Channel 5 reported on two whistleblowers who came forward to describe DCS covering up dangerous conditions in some foster homes, saying Quin did not want alarming reports finding their way into the hands of the media.
One of the whistleblowers, Brenda Myers, resigned from DCS after her supervisor allegedly instructed her to revise an inspection report that detailed dangerous conditions inside a transitional home in Nashville.
Quin told a legislative committee in December of 2023:
“No staff member was ever asked to change any report. In fact, a staff member was asked not to change any report. That’s the truth of the matter. We were going to schedule a second inspection of the (transitional home). And that’s the truth of the matter. We would never, ever want to issue any reports that were untrue, that lacked documentation … I hope that clears up the matter.”
Lustbader emailed Youth Services Insider to say that he thinks the state’s past success can serve as a roadmap again.
“At the time of our case…there was a real leadership focus in the state on supporting families — family connections, reunification and kin supports for kids in care, and keeping kids with their families in the first place whenever possible,” he said. “These issues remain critical today and we are hopeful that this new lawsuit can once again improve the lives of kids in Tennessee.”
A Better Childhood is joined in the lawsuit by a legal team for the plaintiffs that includes the Barbara McDowell Social Justice Center, and three law firms: Willkie Farr and Gallagher; Bass, Berry and Sims; and Wang Hecker.
Note: This article was updated on Wednesday, May 21.