CPS Lawsuit Dam Cracking

Posted On June 26, 2019

Please Note: I’m working to rebuild this web site but wanted to error in getting this story out quickly. Thanks for your understanding.

For decades, state child protective service (CPS) agencies hand-in-hand with state family courts have saved thousands of kids from alleged abuse scenarios.  One minor problem.  They actually didn’t let Constitutional law get in their way.

Due process went to the wayside and no one was watching.  Until now.

In Oregon, a class action lawsuit is underway representing 8000 kids in child welfare programs that aren’t complying with Federal or Constitutional law. Staff are fleeing the crime scene.

In Indiana, 22,000 children are represented by a lawsuit against the Department of Child Services (DCS) in the wake of a DCS Director leaving because she felt the system was “ensuring kids will die”.

Minnesota’s vague statutes are unconstitutional.  Another CPS Lawsuit.

Arizona leads the country in nabbing kids.  There the criteria for family removal has been reduced to the ridiculous. Recently the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals needed to be involved in a case where kids were separated from their mother because she photographed them in the bathtub.  Fortunately the court had more common sense than CPS, validating the mother’s “constitutional right to live together without governmental interference”. 

In California, Orange County was successfully sued by girls who were taken from their mother when social workers committed perjury.  $9.6 million.  For the moment, collaborating CA courts have avoided direct fire through the CA Commission on Judicial Performance (CJP).  It is tasked with court transparency yet for years has repeatedly been unable to report on numerous filed complaints about the courts.  Coincidence?  Maybe they know something we don’t.

North Carolina CPS staff are lying under oath and meeting notes are “missing”. 

There’s blood in the water.

But poorly run CPS programs is still only the tip of the iceberg.

The story behind the story: Federal reward incentives fund the CPS agencies doing the dirty work. 

The more kids that child advocate agencies take, the more money states make.  Title 4 Federal grants pour millions into the states when agencies, under the veil of protecting kids, pad their pockets by increasing their caseloads.  So, if Title 4 isn’t stopped or reformed, there will continue to be temptations to take kids on the side of caution — mistakes that benefit CPS agencies.

Under trained, overworked social workers have been trigger happy far too long.  And financial incentives made double checking the work through due process optional.  Now states are beginning to feel the ramifications of those oversights.

The family courts have momentarily ducked scrutiny in many instances even though their rubber stamps enabled this entire debacle while collecting money through Title 4 racketeering schemes.  The BAR Association is unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them. 

Being wrongfully separated from your kids is a hard pill to swallow.  Swarms of parents welcoming legal reparations are waiting for judgment to fall upon their CPS, their courthouse, their state. And now the lawyers who made their bread and butter on removing kids from perfectly good homes can now jump to the other team; suing the CPS systems that enabled their success.

It is clear that CPS lawsuits will continue to rollout.  And with each successful lawsuit, the next one becomes easier.  The feeding frenzy isn’t in full stride.  Yet.

Money will flow.  Laws may change.  But the true damage – unethically removing kids from nurturing loving parents – will unlikely be fixed within our lifetimes.