Opinion ID: 604762
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Challenges to the Child-Welfare and Foster-Care System

Text: 27 The district court adjudged the defendants liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating the federal and local statutory rights of all of the children in the plaintiff class and for violating the constitutional rights of those plaintiffs in the District of Columbia's foster care custody. LaShawn A. v. Dixon, 762 F.Supp. 959, 998 (D.D.C.1991). Appellants attack the judgment so far as it rests on federal statutory rights. They argue that the Supreme Court's opinion in Suter v. Artist M., --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 1360, 118 L.Ed.2d 1 (1992), decided after the district court issued its ruling in LaShawn, renders the federal statutes at issue unenforceable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Appellants also challenge the constitutional basis of the district court opinion. 28 It is not necessary to reach the complex constitutional and federal statutory issues in this case. The District of Columbia's statutes and regulations provide a scheme for the protection and care of foster children, and children reported to be abused or neglected, that is equally as comprehensive as that provided by the federal statutes and is appropriately before us under our pendent jurisdiction. 29 As outlined by the district court, the obligations of the District of Columbia Department of Human Services under the Abuse and Neglect Act, the Licensure Act, and the CFSD Manual of Operations parallel almost precisely the requirements contained in the relevant federal laws. Every claim supported by federal law is also supported by District law. LaShawn A. v. Dixon, 762 F.Supp. at 961-64. The DHS has violated District law as well as federal law by failing, for example, to initiate timely investigations into reports of abuse or neglect, to provide services to families in order to prevent the placement of children in foster care, to place those who may not safely remain at home in appropriate foster homes and institutions, to develop case plans for children in foster care, and to move children into a situation of permanency. 30 As the district court framed its decision, local law did not provide an entirely independent ground for the judgment, because the court did not find that the local statutes themselves provided the children with an explicit or implied private right of action. Instead, the district court apparently decided that the District of Columbia's statutes and policies create constitutionally protected liberty and property interests for those children in the District's foster-care custody. [301 U.S.App.D.C. 55] To the extent these statutes and regulations confer benefits upon the plaintiffs in the District's foster care, the deprivation of those benefits takes on constitutional dimensions. LaShawn, 762 F.Supp. at 993. The children thus had a cause of action under § 1983. 31 If, however, we determine that the district court's judgment can be supported entirely by reference to the law of the District of Columbia, as appellees argue, we need not enter the § 1983 thicket at all. The fact that the district court itself did not rest its decision on this basis is of no concern, for [t]he prevailing party may, of course, assert in a reviewing court any ground in support of his judgment, whether or not that ground was relied upon or even considered by the trial court. Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 475 n. 6, 90 S.Ct. 1153, 1156 n. 6, 25 L.Ed.2d 491 (1970). 32 We find that the District statutes create a private cause of action for children in foster care and for children reported to have been abused or neglected but not yet in the District's custody. As for the latter group, this matter was conclusively settled by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Turner v. District of Columbia, 532 A.2d 662 (D.C.App.1987). In that case, a mother brought suit against the District of Columbia on behalf of her children for the city's failure to remove the children from their abusive father's home. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals found that the Abuse and Neglect Act provides a private remedy against the District for the special class of abused and neglected children protected by the statute: 33 With respect to the District of Columbia ... we hold that when [the Child Protective Services Division] received a report that the two Roddy children, who were specifically and individually identified, were being abused by their father, [the Abuse and Neglect Act] created a special relationship between the District and the two children. From that moment on, the District had a duty to take certain steps prescribed by the Act for the protection of those children. The District's breach of that duty is actionable under the special duty exception to the general rule [that the government's general duty to the citizenry at large is not enforceable by a particular individual]. 34 Id. at 675. 35 Turner establishes that the children in the present case who are reported to be abused or neglected but who are not yet in the District's custody have a private right of action under the District's Abuse and Neglect Act. It therefore seems self-evident that this Act (which regulates the District's foster-care system as well as its child-abuse-response system) also creates privately enforceable rights for those children actually in the District's custody. It is generally recognized that the state owes a greater duty toward people in its custody than toward people still in the care of private actors. Indeed, in assessing duties imposed on the state by the United States Constitution (as opposed to duties imposed by state statutes), the Supreme Court has held that the state has a constitutional duty to assume responsibility for the safety and well-being of a person only when the state takes that person into its custody. DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep't of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 199-201, 109 S.Ct. 998, 1005-1006, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989). 36 It would strain logic to conclude that the District, through the Abuse and Neglect Act, has assumed a duty on behalf of children still in the private sphere, but not on behalf of those youngsters who are in its custody. We therefore hold that the Abuse and Neglect Act creates a private right of action for children in the foster-care system. 37 There is an additional basis in District law for the right of the children in foster care to sue to enforce the statutes at issue. The other District of Columbia statute relied on by appellees, the Youth Residential Facilities Licensure Act, explicitly provides these children with a private cause of action. This act regulates Youth Residential Facilities, which it defines to include, but not necessarily be limited to, foster homes, youth shelters, runaway shelters, emergency care facilities, youth group homes, supervised apartments, and [301 U.S.App.D.C. 56] residential treatment centers. D.C.Code Ann. § 3-801(9)(B). 38 Unquestionably, every child entangled in the D.C. foster-care system is situated in a facility covered by this provision. The act goes on to grant every resident of one of these facilities a private right of action: 39 Notwithstanding the availability of any other remedy, a resident, any person acting on or in behalf of a resident, or the licensee or administrator of a facility may bring an action in court for mandamus to order the Mayor, a District government agency, or the youth residential monitoring committee to comply with this chapter, a rule issued pursuant to this chapter, or any other District law relevant to the operation of the facility or the care of its residents. 40 D.C.Code Ann. § 3-808(d)(1) (emphasis added). 41 In other words, the Licensure Act permits children in foster care to sue to enforce not only the requirements of the Licensure Act itself, but also all of the provisions of the Abuse and Neglect Act related to the care of these children. This broad language encompasses all the provisions that the appellants are alleged to have violated. 42 In sum, under District of Columbia law, every member of the appellee class had a private right of action to enforce the obligations imposed on the DHS by local statutes and regulations. Moreover, these statutes provide an independent basis for supporting the district court's judgment. We therefore affirm the district court without addressing the federal statutory and constitutional claims. Our authority to decide the case entirely on pendent state grounds is incontrovertible. The Supreme Court has held that where two distinct grounds in support of a single cause of action are alleged, one only of which presents a federal question ... the federal court, even though the federal ground be not established, may nevertheless retain and dispose of the case upon the nonfederal ground. United Mine Workers of America v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 722, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 1137, 16 L.Ed.2d 218 (1966) (quoting Hurn v. Oursler, 289 U.S. 238, 246, 53 S.Ct. 586, 589, 77 L.Ed. 1148 (1933)). 43 No challenge has been raised to the district court's certification of the class. In any event, such certification was proper in relation to the pendent claims, as well as the federal claims. The children could not have brought their District law claims as a class action in the Family Division. See Rules Governing Neglect Proceedings Rule 1(b) (excluding from list of rules applicable to neglect proceedings the rule providing for class actions). They clearly could, however, have brought these claims as a class action in the District of Columbia Superior Court. See D.C.SUPER.CT.R.CIV.P. 23. It thus is not necessary for us to consider the issue of whether the federal district court could have entertained the pendent claims as a class action if the procedure had in fact been unavailable to the children in the District of Columbia courts.