## Facts

- A certified class of minor children in Texas’s Permanent Managing Conservatorship (PMC) sued Texas officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging systemic conditions in foster care exposed them to a substantial risk of serious harm.
- Texas foster-care administration distinguished temporary conservatorship from long-term PMC; PMC children generally received fewer services and less legal representation.
- The record showed chronic caseworker overload for PMC children, with caseworkers going long periods without seeing children and failing to follow up on abuse reports.
- Evidence indicated deficient monitoring and enforcement in licensed foster care, including large numbers of known licensing violations with minimal sanctions or closures.
- The record included risks associated with group placements, child-on-child abuse in mixed-age settings, placement instability, and sibling separation.
- After a bench trial, the district court found substantive due process violations and deliberate indifference, and entered a detailed, system-reform injunction addressing staffing, investigations, oversight, and placement practices.

## Issues

1. Whether Texas officials violated PMC children’s substantive due process right to reasonable safety by acting with deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm.
2. Whether asserted system features (including placement array and foster group homes as such) constituted independent constitutional violations on the trial record.
3. Whether the district court’s permanent injunction was impermissibly broad and insufficiently tailored to the constitutional violations proven.

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s liability rulings, vacated the injunction, and remanded.
- The court affirmed liability based on two constitutional violations: (1) maintaining overburdened PMC caseworker caseloads, and (2) failing adequately to monitor and oversee children in the licensed foster care (LFC) subclass.
- The court reversed liability findings premised on the overall “placement array” and on treating foster group homes as unconstitutional per se.
- The court vacated the district court’s extensive injunction because it mandated numerous specific reforms beyond what was necessary to remedy the violations upheld on appeal.
- The case was remanded for a revised injunction limited to curing the two affirmed violations and no broader than minimally required for constitutional compliance.

## Legal Principles

- Children in state foster care have a substantive due process right to reasonable safety while in state custody.
- A substantive due process violation in this context requires proof that officials were deliberately indifferent to a substantial risk of serious harm, meaning they knew of and disregarded an excessive risk to health or safety.
- Systemwide policies and practices can satisfy deliberate indifference when they predictably prevent adequate protection of children in custody (e.g., extreme caseloads and ineffective oversight).
- Federal equitable relief must be narrowly tailored to the specific constitutional violations proven and may not extend into broad, ongoing management of state institutions.
- Where liability is not established for a challenged practice, remedial provisions directed at that practice exceed permissible injunctive scope.

## Conclusion

The Fifth Circuit held that Texas violated foster children’s substantive due process rights through excessive PMC caseworker caseloads and inadequate monitoring of licensed foster-care placements, but rejected broader theories of systemwide unconstitutionality and required any injunction to be limited to the minimum measures necessary to remedy the specific violations found.


M.D. ex rel. Stukenberg v. Abbott, 907 F.3d 237 (5th Cir. 2018)