Trending
CHARLESTON - The federal judge presiding over a class action lawsuit challenging conditions in West Virginia’s foster care system denied a request by state officials to pause the case while seeking clarification from the U.S. Supreme Court, setting a future trial date.
U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin issued an order Thursday denying a motion by attorneys representing Gov. Patrick Morrisey and the state Department of Human Services seeking a stay of the lawsuit brought on behalf of children in the state foster care system in 2019. The West Virginia Attorney General's Office and the Brown and Peisch PLLC law firm filed the motion at the end of June in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia seeking a stay on proceedings in R. vs. Morrisey while the state files a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking rulings in the case.
Goodwin said it was time for the case to move forward.
"This case began seven years ago and has been mired with delay," Goodwin wrote. "And while Defendants are certainly entitled to seek further review of important constitutional questions, they cannot continue to stall this litigation."
In a 2025 ruling, Goodwin dismissed the lawsuit brought on behalf of thousands of foster children in West Virginia by attorneys for A Better Childhood, Disability Rights West Virginia and the Shaffer and Shaffer law firm. But a three-judge panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Goodwin’s ruling earlier this summer, remanding the case to the District Court.
The 2019 case, originally involving 12 children in the state's overloaded foster care system, alleged that foster children in the state are often housed either in hotels, shelters, institutions or out of state and are subject to abuse and neglect during the tenure of former Gov. Jim Justice and the former Department of Health and Human Resources, which has since been split into three separate departments.
"The allegations of constitutional violations, institutional failure, and harm to children in State custody are serious, in some cases extreme, and another delay in these proceedings risks further abuses before this court has had an opportunity to consider the claims presented,” Goodwin wrote.
Goodwin also ordered that limited discovery in the case be reopened and set a new litigation schedule, with a trial slated to start in March, nearly eight years since the case was first filed.
"Only a glance at the public docket would show that the litigation of this case has been zealous, the discovery voluminous, and the motion practice constant," Goodwin wrote. "In the same way, this case has presented numerous legal questions for two different district judges, two appeals to the Fourth Circuit, two reversals, and already one petition for certiorari denied. And because the court will not decide a challenge to a living system on a stale record, the parties will need to engage in additional discovery since the Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment was filed nearly two years ago."
Attorneys for the foster children issued statements Thursday praising Goodwin for moving forward with the case and acknowledging the issues within West Virginia’s foster care system over the years.
"We are eager for the chance to prove that children's basic, fundamental rights continue to be violated by the rampant and ongoing systemic problems in the state's foster care system," said Marcia Lowry, executive director of A Better Childhood. "The district judge has recognized that a new standard needs to be applied, and the decision from the Appellate court has firmly made clear that federal courts have the mandate to act when those violations are proven.”
"The Court's decision today sends a clear message to the Defendants that there will be no more delay while the children of West Virginia continue to suffer at the hands of the State," said Richard Walters, partner with Shaffer and Shaffer. "Judge Goodwin has also put the Defendants on notice that when the State takes a child into its custody that it has an affirmative duty protect that child and 'keep him reasonably safe from serious harm.'"
Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com.