Judge Fines Texas $100,000 a Day Over Foster Care Fix Failure

Texas must start paying $100,000 a day in fines for failing to comply with a federal court’s plan to fix the state’s foster care system, a judge said Monday.

US District Judge Janis Jack of the Southern District of Texas said remedial orders to timely investigate child abuse and neglect complaints weren’t achieved.

The fines this time—$50,000 a day for each of two failed orders—will continue to be imposed until the state shows it has complied, Jack said.

Jack referenced “worrying” testimony from Stephen Pahl, deputy executive in the Texas Health and Human Services. At a December hearing, Pahl struggled to answer basic questions about investigations into foster care abuse.

“Mr. Pahl’s unfamiliarity with (Provider investigations) is worrying—it is, after all, difficult to competently oversee a unit one knows nothing about,” Jack said. “More worrying, however, is the fact that Mr. Pahl is, apparently, the person most knowledgeable about the PI unit.”

Jack held in contempt Cecile Erwin Young, executive commissioner of the state’s Health and Human Services Commission, for the agency falling short on two remedial orders. It was the third time Jack found Texas in contempt for non-compliance in this case; in 2019, she fined the state $150,000 for failing to have an adult supervisor stay awake at night at privately operated group homes. A year later, Jack threatened fines of $75,000 a day, but didn’t impose them.

During the December hearing on the contempt motion, Jack considered removing the foster care system from Texas’s control. She didn’t do that Monday. However, in her 427-page order Jack said she’s carrying forward a motion to place the system under partial receivership.

Jack scheduled a hearing for June 26 to revisit the receivership motion along with additional contempt motions.

The case, originally brought by children in the Texas foster system a decade ago, alleges the state failed to adequately investigate instances of abuse within the system. Jack found that children in the system face an unconstitutional risk of harm in the state’s custody. She spent two years helping craft remedial orders.

She said she’d continue to impose the daily fine until Health and Human Services leadership produce to a court appointed monitor evidence of timely investigating complaints from foster care children.

The case is M.D. v. Abbott, S.D. Tex., No. 2:11-cv-00084, 4/15/24