This story was provided courtesy of West Virginia Watch.
“The children are just not being protected, and that’s our concern,” said Marcia Lowry, executive director of A Better Childhood, which brought the lawsuit with West Virginia foster children
A sweeping lawsuit brought by foster children against West Virginia continues to seek an appeal after a federal judge tossed the lawsuit out, saying the problems couldn’t be resolved by a court.
Many of the child welfare issues included in the lawsuit persist, including housing children in group homes due to a lack of foster families and in-state support services for kids. The lawsuit also focused on overburdened Child Protective Services workers; a Dept. of Human Services official told lawmakers in March that CPS have more than the recommended child cases to handle.
The lawsuit also alleged that the state sent foster children to unsafe institutions and left them to languish in the system without any plan for permanency.
A Better Childhood is a New York-based nonprofit organization that brought the lawsuit in 2019 with foster children and in-state attorneys. It was granted class action status by a judge in 2023.
Marcia Lowry, A Better Childhood’s executive director, said that after arguing for an appeal in the Fourth Circuit last September, there has been no other movement in the lawsuit.
“We are hopeful that we will prevail on this appeal,” she said in a phone interview. “The Legislature is not acting on this. The executive branch is not acting on this. It seems like the court is our only place to hope for any kind of change in the West Virginia system.”
U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin dismissed the lawsuit in February 2025 without disputing the allegations of the lawsuit. “This court cannot take over the foster care system of West Virginia,” he wrote in a 19-page opinion.
The judge said the state’s foster care system had cycled through “inaction, bureaucratic indifference, shocking neglect and temporary fixes for years.”
“The blame squarely lies with the West Virginia state government,” Goodwin said. “ … This compelled dismissal is in no way an endorsement of the system as it remains … State officials can no longer hide behind this lawsuit to avoid the consequences of their political decisions.”
The lawsuit was originally filed against previous Gov. Jim Justice and former foster care officials then continued under Gov. Patrick Morrisey.
A spokesperson for DoHS said in an email that the department was unable to comment on pending litigation. Before the judge’s dismissal, DoHS tried to have the case thrown out, citing improvements to the system like hiring additional CPS workers.
Morrisey has promised improvements to the state’s long-troubled foster care system. DoHS has implemented a new child abuse and neglect evaluation system that is supposed to improve safety decisions and reduces unnecessary child remaovals. West Virginia recently partnered with the Trump administration for an initiative to increase the number of foster homes.
Lowry said that from their point of view, nothing has improved in the state’s foster care system.
“It is a totally unaccountable system,” Lowry said. “I don’t know how many more stories there are out there of children being kept in a shed (or) about kids being mistreated in homes that have not been properly vetted. The case loads are really high. Nothing has changed.”
As part of its lawsuit, A Better Childhood sought a monitor to ensure that the state met any foster care improvement requirements outlined in the judgment. Lowry said that part “would be critical.”
“The children are just not being protected, and that’s our concern,” she said.
The state paid more than $6.3 million to Brown and Peisch, a law firm in Washington, D.C. that has provided the state’s legal counsel in the case since 2020.
State officials also faced a recommended $172,000 in sanctions in 2024 for their role in the destruction of emails related to the foster care lawsuit. A former top state attorney resigned in the wake of the deleted email scandal.
