Two Black mothers from the Bronx headlined a class-action lawsuit filed against the city on May 28, alleging the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) illegally took their children without a court order. Both claim the agency exploited an emergency mechanism to circumvent constitutional and statutory red tape when conducting family separations against them and other Black and Brown parents.
Taking a child from their legal guardians typically requires a family court judge’s permission or parental consent. Caseworkers may invoke the ACS Emergency Removal Policy when they cannot obtain a court order in time without jeopardizing the child’s safety. The plaintiffs and their lawyers say the child welfare system should only employ these immediate intervention powers as a last resort.
However, ACS applies this authority frequently and openly. As of March, more than half of approved removals this year did not stem from a court order and only received judicial review after taking the child. The city’s own website says, “generally, removals should be done with a court order.”
“ACS has a very limited statutorily authorized authority to remove a child from their home when they believe that the child is in imminent risk to their life or health and there is no time to get a court order,” said Melissa Friedman, an attorney on the plaintiffs’ legal team. “That second piece is really important because we believe, and our named plaintiffs show, that there are many circumstances in which ACS conducts an emergency removal but did actually have time to get a court order.”
Identifying under the pseudonym “Denise Archer,” one mother recounted how ACS allegedly invoked the emergency policy to take her three children and place them in foster care. The lawsuit filing alleges her then-preteen daughter, who is diagnosed with autism and ADHD, was ultimately “involuntarily hospitalized and forcibly medicated approximately 10 times” and that a male resident allegedly punched her in the face while she was in a pre-placement shelter.
An appellate court reversal reunited Archer with her children roughly three years after the removal. Archer, who spent time in foster care herself, is still rebuilding her kids’ “sense of stability and heal[ing] their relationships” after the time apart.
“ACS workers are wolves in sheep’s clothing, and you have to be very cautious with them when you’re a Black or Latino parent,” said Archer in a statement. “I tried to go to ACS to seek some type of assistance when my family was going through a hard time, and it turned into an almost three-year separation where I had to fight every step of the way to get my kids returned home.”
Another mother, who identifies as Black and Latina, filed as a lead plaintiff in the class action under the pseudonym “Danielle Lorimer.” According to court filings, she was a domestic violence survivor who faced an emergency removal just an hour and a half after ACS allegedly refused to request a court order. “I’ve done everything they ask, every single time,” Lorimer told the New Yorker. “I’ve done preventative services, family therapy, self-therapy, homemaking services, but I feel like nothing is ever good enough. You still take my kids.”
The lawsuit also suggests that ACS violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause through the disproportionate removals of Black and Brown children. The complaint points to a “historical legacy of racialized family separation” dating back to slavery and Reconstruction.
According to a 2023 statement from former Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom, half of the city’s Black youth become the subject of a child welfare investigation by the time they turn 18 years old, so socioeconomic factors cannot fully explain the disparities — even higher-income Black families face increased ACS attention. Disproportionate investigations lead to disproportionate family removals.
“An enormous part of our lawsuit is that these emergency removals target almost exclusively Black and Brown families in the city — 90% of emergency removals are Black and Brown and only about 3% are white,” said Friedman. “It is hugely problematic. The statistics alone speak for themselves.”
Friedman, the attorney in charge of legal strategy and training at the Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Practice, also pointed to an unpublished ACS racial equity report obtained by the Bronx Defenders through public record requests. The findings indicate pressure on caseworkers to default to removals to cover the agency and its staff’s reputation, which, in the internal audit’s own words, “prevents parents, predominantly poor Black and Brown parents who don’t have recourse to legal or other support, from getting a fair chance.”
“Staff described a serious disconnect between the realities of their work and the policies they were made to enforce and enact,” said the report’s draft. “They pointed to many policies and practices that they know to be harmful to parents, but are still responsible to enforce and uphold. For this reason, staff feel complicit in the harm that ACS can cause Black and Brown families and no power within the agency to make changes that might benefit [those families]. This leads to feelings of deep disillusionment with the work itself and does active harm to staff who feel that they aren’t set up to positively support parents.”
Meanwhile, a federal appeals court recently sided against the city in another lawsuit regarding emergency removals after a district court’s dismissal. The case involves ACS taking a newborn from his father, who was never accused of abuse, without a court order, due to the mother’s history with child welfare. Ultimately, they were reunited three years later. According to an amicus brief, the father is Black.
“My infant son was torn from my arms by ACS when he was just a few days old and put into foster care with strangers,” said the father, who identified as K.W. “I fought with all my heart and might to get him back for nearly three years. After my son came home, we’ve been fighting to right that devastating wrong.”
Importantly, the ruling does not allow individual caseworkers to shield themselves from personal liability for family separations through qualified immunity. The court concluded that the ACS employee could “safely have waited to obtain a court order.”
Oversight also remains an issue. ACS only reports emergency removal numbers when a judge later approves, but the agency does not provide public information for how frequently caseworkers take children without a court order and subsequently return them without judicial review.
The Department of Investigation (DOI) issued a report last month about how certain state law protections prevent the city’s watchdog from accessing critical data for investigating ACS. This past Monday, June 8, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill to allow DOI access to these records.
ACS did not respond to requests for comment.
