State's move to bump federal judge from longtime foster care lawsuit caps years of battles

On a chilly morning last January, U.S. District Judge Janis Jack was visibly on edge in her Corpus Christi courtroom.

She leaned in and cast a hard look at Cecile E. Young, the Texas Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott during the pandemic.

“Commissioner Young,” Jack said. “Have you ever seen the inside of a jail cell?”

The threat was that Young — who had worked in state government for more than 30 years — would be led out of the courtroom in handcuffs alongside Stephanie Muth, another Abbott appointee at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, if their agencies didn’t produce “right now” documents Jack had previously requested that showed whether their agencies had been complying with court orders regarding Texas’ beleaguered foster care system.

It was a provocative — and extremely tense — moment, though by far not the only such exchange during that dayslong court hearing. And it crystallized the combative and rancorous relationship that has festered between Jack and Texas welfare officials as they’ve fought over a costly class action lawsuit — filed in 2011 on behalf of children who had been removed from their parents and become wards of the state.

Now, Texas child welfare officials want a higher court to remove Jack from the case, the only one she is overseeing after moving in 2010 to “senior status,” a sort of semi-retirement for federal judges. Since 2011, she’s been the state’s de facto foster care czar.

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/08/texas-foster-care-lawsuit-judge-janis-jack/#:~:text=Now,%20Texas%20child%20welfare%20officials,will%20never%20let%20them%20succeed.