## Facts

- Six children in Massachusetts foster care, suing through next friends and on behalf of a putative class of roughly 8,500 children in state custody due to abuse or neglect, challenged the statewide administration of foster care.
- Defendants were Massachusetts officials sued in their official capacities, including the Governor and leadership of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services and the Department of Children and Families (DCF), the agency administering foster care.
- Federal foster-care funding is tied to compliance with the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (AACWA) and federal review mechanisms evaluating safety, permanency, and child well-being.
- Evidence showed DCF performed poorly on multiple federal review metrics and faced recurring operational problems, including high caseloads, inconsistent caseworker and family visits, placement instability, delays in reunification/adoption services, and inadequate preparation for youth aging out of care.
- Plaintiffs framed the case as a systemic challenge, alleging that DCF’s practices exposed children in custody to serious risk of harm and resulted in actual harms in individual cases.
- Plaintiffs sought broad prospective injunctive relief that would require major reforms to DCF’s foster-care practices and oversight.

## Issues

1. Whether DCF’s statewide practices and omissions toward foster children in state custody amounted to class-wide violations of substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment, including whether defendants acted with deliberate indifference to known or obvious risks.
2. Whether the AACWA provisions invoked by plaintiffs create individual rights enforceable through 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and if so, whether DCF violated those rights on a systemic basis.
3. Whether the record supported the sweeping structural injunction sought to reform and supervise the state foster-care system.

## Decision

- The district court entered judgment for defendants on all claims and denied the requested injunctive relief.
- On due process, the court found serious problems and occasional tragic outcomes but concluded plaintiffs did not prove a class-wide pattern rising to deliberate indifference or conscience-shocking conduct.
- On the AACWA claim, the court concluded the relied-upon provisions did not create privately enforceable § 1983 rights, or alternatively that plaintiffs failed to prove violations warranting relief.
- The First Circuit affirmed, concluding the factual findings were supported by the record and the legal conclusions contained no errors of law.

## Legal Principles

- When a state takes children into foster care, a “special relationship” may impose an affirmative constitutional duty to provide reasonable safety and care, but liability requires more than negligence or poor administration.
- A class-wide substantive due process claim based on foster-care conditions requires proof that responsible officials were deliberately indifferent to known or obvious, substantial risks, and that the conduct meets the demanding “conscience-shocking” threshold.
- Evidence of severe harm to some children does not, without class-wide proof of deliberate indifference and causation, establish a systemic constitutional violation justifying statewide injunctive control.
- Spending Clause statutes such as the AACWA are enforceable via § 1983 only when specific provisions unambiguously create individually focused rights; general program conditions and performance measures typically do not.
- Federal courts may not impose broad structural injunctions over state social-service systems absent proof of a constitutional violation or violation of an enforceable federal right.

## Conclusion

The court denied statewide injunctive relief because plaintiffs did not prove that systemic deficiencies in Massachusetts foster care amounted to class-wide deliberate indifference under the Fourteenth Amendment or that the AACWA provisions at issue created and were violated as enforceable § 1983 rights; the judgment for defendants was affirmed on appeal.


Connor B. ex rel. Vigurs v. Patrick, 985 F. Supp. 2d 129 (D. Mass. 2013)