Today, the ACLU of the District of Columbia’s oldest case came to a close, with the court’s approval of a settlement agreement in LaShawn A. v. Muriel Bowser, a class action that, over the course of 32 years, transformed the D.C. foster care system from a dysfunctional mess to what the judge called “a national model.”

When we filed the case in 1989, the District of Columbia’s foster care system was in total disarray. More than 40% of positions were vacant, and the agency didn’t even know how many active employees it actually had. Social workers were untrained and had impossible caseloads of more than 100 children each. Reports of child abuse went uninvestigated. Children were kept in “90-day emergency placements” for years. Foster homes were overcrowded and unsafe. Medication was inappropriately used to control children’s behavior. There were no specialized placements for children with specialized needs, no reunification services for families, and little if any planning for children in foster care. Although federal funding was available to state foster care agencies, the District of Columbia received none because it couldn’t figure out how to apply.

Thirty-two years ago this month, ACLU-DC (then called the ACLU of the National Capital Area), together with the Children’s Rights Project of the National ACLU, filed LaShawn A. v. Marion Barry with the goal of reforming this broken system. Lead plaintiff LaShawn A., who was then 4 years old, had been in “emergency” care for more than two years, during which time the District had failed to provide her mother with any services to assist in reunification and had failed to provide LaShawn with services she needed for her serious emotional and developmental problems. Other plaintiffs had similar stories.

The case went to trial in February 1991. In his post-trial opinion, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan (a Ronald Reagan appointee) described what the evidence had shown: “District children relegated to entire childhoods spent in foster care drift. … A lost generation of children whose tragic plight is being repeated every day.” He ruled that the District was failing to meet constitutional and statutory minimum standards of care for the children in its custody, and entered an order requiring an across-the-board overhaul of the District’s child welfare system.

The District government essentially ignored the court’s order. After many efforts by the plaintiffs and the court to achieve compliance, Judge Hogan held the District in contempt of court in April 1995, and in May 1995 he appointed a Receiver to run the agency, removing its operation from the incompetent hands of the District government. The District appealed but lost.

Under the Receiver’s direction, the agency finally began to make progress, and in 2001 the plaintiffs (now represented by Children’s Rights, Inc., because the Children’s Rights Project had left the ACLU and become an independent entity) and the District agreed to end the Receivership in exchange for additional promised reforms. One of the agreed changes was the promotion of the Child and Family Services Agency to be an independent cabinet-level agency reporting directly to the Mayor. Until then, it had been three levels removed: a Division of the Family Services Administration of the Commission on Social Services of the Department of Human Services.

Back under District control, however, the agency began backsliding, and in 2008 things came to a head. In January of that year, the bodies of four deceased children (ages 5, 6, 11, and 17) were discovered in the home of Banita Jacks. Agency investigators had been alerted to potential problems at the Jacks home for more than a year but had not adequately investigated. In July, the Washington Post reported that a six-month-old had died of an undetermined cause almost three months after becoming the subject of a report of child neglect, but the investigator assigned to the case had never visited the infant or his home; she reportedly was carrying 50 open investigative cases at the time and had never visited 17 of those 50 children. The agency’s director resigned. Reports of abuse and neglect skyrocketed, causing caseloads to balloon and many employees to resign, which caused the caseloads of the remaining employees to explode.

A new director was appointed, and substantial new resources were directed to the agency. In 2010 the parties optimistically agreed to a new “Implementation and Exit Plan,” but full implementation remained elusive, and exit was therefore not in the cards. By 2019, however, the agency was finally doing well in meeting most of its goals, and the plaintiffs (now represented by A Better Childhood, Inc., the new organization led by Marcia Lowry, who had been plaintiffs’ lead counsel since the beginning of the case) and the defendants agreed to an Exit and Sustainability Plan in the hope of ending the court’s involvement in ongoing supervision of the agency. Performance continued to improve, and in August 2020 the parties reached a tentative settlement of the case. Because settlements in class actions must be approved by the court, the court scheduled a public “fairness hearing” for June 1, 2021 and ordered notice to be sent to all class members.

That hearing was held today. No member of the class objected to the settlement, and Judge Hogan—who has presided over the case since it was filed—approved it, formally closing the case, three weeks short of its 32nd anniversary. He praised all the parties for their hard work over many years, and observed what a powerful tool a federal class action, pursued over many years, can be.

Institutional change can be lengthy and difficult, but worthwhile. Reports of potential abuse or neglect are now promptly investigated, and when confirmed, child victims can expect to receive caring, professional treatment from trained caseworkers. They strive for prompt reunification with parents or other family members when possible, or prompt adoption by a suitable family when reunification is not possible.

Six mayors and 32 years later, the case is closed, but the ACLU-DC and A Better Childhood will continue to monitor the agency’s performance for an additional year, retaining the ability to file an action alleging breach of the settlement agreement until June 30, 2022.

An estimated 60,000 D.C. residents have been previously incarcerated. They've paid their debt to society, yet many struggle to rebuild lives after they have served their sentence. The barriers they face include revocation of voting rights, disqualification from housing assistance, and mandated disclosure of previous felonies on job applications, which result in many formerly incarcerated remaining unemployed.

In D.C., these “returning citizens” face particular challenges. Because we are not a state, any resident who receives a sentence of more than one year and one day is incarcerated under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, not the local D.C. Department of Corrections. Inmates can be sent to federal prisons anywhere in the country, which severely limits visits from friends and family. Maintaining personal relationships to home is a critical component to successful reintegration upon returning home.

Earlier this spring, the Public Defender Service for D.C. released The Reentry Navigator, a comprehensive resource for returning citizens seeking to secure jobs, housing, and education, as well as to understand new technologies and their legal rights. The 900-page book is a critical resource for all returning citizens or anyone preparing for release from incarceration. ACLU-DC Board member Courtney Stewart, the Co-Founder and CEO of The National Reentry Network for Returning Citizens, has been on the frontlines of addressing these challenges since his own reintegration back into society. He answered a few questions about the importance of this work.

Why did you choose to dedicate your work to supporting returning citizens?

I’m a returning citizen and I remember my childhood with the circumstances that led me to into the criminal legal system. I was living in poverty, not having what I needed for school, being picked on as a child in the neighborhood, growing up trying to take care of myself, sleeping in hallways and running away from home, being involved in foster care. It was a laundry list of things as a young person that affected me. So, it was easy for me to get involved and give back once I got older. I decided I didn’t want to be part of the criminal legal system anymore. I had firsthand experience with how this affects a Black boy who ends up in the criminal legal system. I believe that [supporting returning citizens] was the most foolproof way to stop this cycle within my family, so there was some self-interest, and I feel like it is my calling.

What’s it like for someone from D.C. who’s been incarcerated to come back home?

You basically come back home to the same nonsense. A lot of people don’t acknowledge that, because coming home after prison is freedom. You’re free from a cage and coming home, that freedom, is the only thing you’re talking about. You have an opportunity to do things you haven’t been able to do for however many years you’ve been incarcerated. But you come home to the same judgement, same barriers, same misinformation, same false pretenses. Coming home from prison is very deceiving and difficult. Individuals need a lot of support and a realistic view of what’s going on, instead of having to hit a brick wall. Not having that support is why so many go back to prison or have dependency issues with drugs.

What policy changes would be needed to best support returning citizens coming home after prison?

A lot has to change. The criminal legal system has had a hold on the Black community in particular for a long time. That system has to give up some of its hold, some would say “dismantle.” You can’t keep having the same system and expecting things to be different.

But the community has as much responsibility as the criminal legal system. It’s where a lot of changes have to take place. The change has to take place in the family and has to take place in the community. Some of the policies are evident: record sealing, expungement, which has a direct impact on people getting loans, jobs, moving forward in their lives. Especially when people can Google you these days. That policy has an impact.

We need to address that, but that’s at the top. We have a lot at the bottom that really needs to be changed. That’s where the seed is planted and watered and fertilized, so we should have a bottom-up approach, too. It’s bigger than policy and legislation. I think the ACLU is a perfect example, we are involved with what’s happening on the ground. It’s the same with the National Reentry Network.

If you look at the system, all of us are part of the problem and so all of us have to be part of the solution. People point fingers because we want others to do the work, but we have to set the example of what needs to be done so others can follow that example.