Class-action lawsuit could shake up DHS
Class-action lawsuit could shake up DHS

By Randy Ellis

Published: February 17, 2008

The federal lawsuit filed Wednesday against state DHS officials has the potential to rock Oklahoma's foster care system — just like earlier class-action lawsuits shook up the state's prison and juvenile justice systems.

"It's going to cost the state millions and millions of dollars to do the right thing — which is to fix the broken foster care system,” predicted Steven Novick, a prominent Tulsa civil rights attorney.

Lawyers in the lawsuit against the Department of Human Services are asking for class-action status so they can represent all children brought into DHS custody because of suspicion of abuse or neglect.

Novick isn't involved in the current lawsuit, but he knows plenty about class actions. He represented troubled Oklahoma juveniles in the 1978 Terry D. class-action lawsuit against DHS that stretched on for 20 years and resulted in numerous reforms in the way juvenile law violators are treated.

The Terry D. case was one of at least four federal class-action lawsuits that have dramatically changed the lives of thousands of Oklahomans over the last 50 years.

Others include:

•A 1961 desegregation lawsuit that lasted 30 years and resulted in court-ordered busing to achieve school integration in Oklahoma City.

•A 1972 lawsuit against Oklahoma's penal system. The lawsuit was commonly referred to as the Bobby Battle case. It went on for more than a quarter century and resulted in numerous court-ordered reforms to relieve overcrowding, improve medical care, restrict use of force and improve prison conditions.

• A 1985 lawsuit over the poor treatment of developmentally disabled residents of Hissom Memorial Center in Sand Springs. That case lasted two decades and resulted in closure of the center and placement of its residents in community-based homes.

Novick said he doesn't know much about the busing case, but each of the other cases was prompted by horrific conditions, and each cost millions and millions of dollars to litigate and institute reforms.

Novick said he has "no doubt” the newest lawsuit against DHS will follow the same pattern.

Novick said he believes the allegations are valid because he repeatedly saw evidence of children having been abused in foster care during the years he was litigating the Terry D. case.

"I looked at hundreds of juvenile records in the Terry D. case, and the percentage of children who had been abused and neglected in the foster care system before they got into the juvenile justice system was astounding,” he said. "In a sense, the state's foster care system is a little factory for young criminals.”

Later, many of those same kids become problems in the adult prison system, he said.

Novick was optimistic that the lawsuit against DHS will bring positive changes to the foster care system in a few years, but was less optimistic that reforms will be permanent.

However, he said the "backsliding” began about a decade ago — right after the judge ended court-ordered supervision by ruling the system had come into substantial compliance with constitutional standards.

Looking back, Novick said he can think of only two permanent reforms he achieved — the elimination of solitary confinement and banning the practice of hog tying children in juvenile institutions.

He said the state has backslid on about everything else and conditions have gotten so bad that the U.S. Justice Department recently had to intervene at the Lloyd E. Rader Children's Center in Sand Springs to try to halt abuses.

The class-action lawsuit against the adult penal system followed a similar pattern of improvement while the system was under court supervision, followed by backsliding once the supervision ended, he said.

"That's the pattern, unfortunately,” Novick said. "We shouldn't be planning and developing social services by the process of litigation.

"That's simply not a good way to do business. Unfortunately, that's the way it's done in Oklahoma. Our prisons had to become hell holes before they would do something. The same thing with juvenile centers. ... That's just poor planning.”

Bob Ravitz, Oklahoma County public defender, said the latest lawsuit against DHS identifies many issues that need to be addressed, such as overcrowded shelters and foster parent abuse.

Ravitz said he wishes the problems could be resolved without litigation, because lawyers who win such cases are often paid millions of dollars.

That money could better be spent on the children, he said.

Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children's Rights, said her organization felt compelled to file the lawsuit because "Oklahoma really is mistreating its children at a shocking level.”

"The system has to change, and it is evident that it is not going to change without external pressure,” she said.

In the short term, some of the changes will cost more money, she said.

Workers need to be better trained; more caseworkers need to be hired to reduce caseloads to manageable levels, and payment rates to foster parents need to be raised so more and better foster homes will be available, Lowry said.

Over time, such reforms would save the state money because children who receive good foster care are much less likely to end up in juvenile institutions and adult prisons, which are extremely expensive, she said.

Oklahoma's current system is "wasting a lot of money as well as squandering the lives of children,” she said.

DHS is arguing against federal court intervention.

"Duplicating the efforts of state courts with federal court intervention seems unnecessary,” the agency said in a news release issued in response to the lawsuit.

DHS intends to study complaints in the lawsuit "to determine whether the services they desire may already be present or can be improved and whether or not the best interests of children can be accomplished without intervention of the federal court,” the news release says.

Children's Rights could have filed its lawsuit in any of Oklahoma's three federal court districts.

Tulsa was chosen, rather than Oklahoma City where DHS is headquartered.

A Children's Rights spokesman cited several reasons for the decision: DHS has major operations in Tulsa; several of the children identified as plaintiffs in the lawsuit either entered DHS custody there or passed through Tulsa foster homes and shelters, and several Tulsa law firms are assisting in the lawsuit.

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