TEXAS, USA — Just more than a week after attorneys representing the State of Texas filed a motion for relief from judgment in the state's ongoing legal battle over its foster care system, the federal judge presiding over the case gave a pretty clear indication of how she feels about it.
"To have the hubris to file a motion of relief from judgment is beyond me; it's unbelievable," U.S. District Judge Janis Jack said in a status hearing in the case Friday morning.
Last week, the state's attorneys filed a 27-page motion that argued the state had complied with 12 of the remedial orders handed down from Judge Jack in 2018 and should be released from federal oversight from court-appointed monitors in those areas.
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On Friday, during a status hearing on a report from the monitors on a different issue, Judge Jack said she would take the state's motion up in June during a regularly scheduled hearing to review reports from the court-appointed monitors. However, during Friday's status hearing, she reacted to the state's motion multiple times.
"This is stunning to me," Judge Jack said.
Friday's status hearing was held after the court-appointed monitors updated the court about issues retrieving information from the state, citing two remedial orders in the case that require the state to provide ongoing complete access to logs, reports, documents and data to the monitors.
In one instance, the monitors' report states that a stakeholder they interviewed sent them an article from a television station in Waco about a man who'd been arrested for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl who had run away from an unlicensed CPS placement or CWOP.
The monitors shared that when they requested the shift logs for the child, the logs were missing for the days she had been missing with entries available for the day before she ran away and the day after she returned.
Monitors said they had to send a follow-up email to DFPS to get the missing shift logs that detailed the child running away and that she made a rape outcry when she returned and was taken to the hospital. The monitors wrote that they would now have known that the logs were missing had a stakeholder not sent the news article with dates for them to check on.
During Friday's hearing, Judge Jack pointed out that missing case logs from CWOP children who have run away could skew the count of CWOP children in the state which is information that's been reviewed heavily in this case and used as a performance measure for DFPS.
"Now we know we are not getting the correct number of CWOP children, period," Judge Jack said.
DFPS Commissioner Stephanie Muth told the court that the department recently changed its method for counting CWOP children following this finding.
The monitors also detailed missing logs for a child in unlicensed placement who had been arrested after assaulting a caseworker, who had a history of being bullied and assaulted by other children. The monitors noted that they would not have known case logs were missing had a stakeholder they interviewed not provided them with information. According to the monitors, when they asked the state about the missing logs, they were told it was "an oversight".
"We are absolutely not trying to hide the shift logs," Commissioner Muth said.
Judge Jack threatened to charge the state per incident if this happens again.
The judge ended by discussing another update from the monitors about a six-year-old child who is on the autism spectrum and has bounced between residential treatment centers and unlicensed facilities who is prescribed multiple psychotropic drugs with reports from caseworkers about discrepancy issues with her dosage.
Judge Jack ended the status hearing by re-iterating her disbelief at the state's motion.
Parties in this case are still waiting on a decision from Judge Jack about whether or not she will hold the state in contempt of court following a hearing in December.
"I don't know how you all sleep at night," Judge Jack said.
