Lawsuit Alleges ‘Unconstitutional’ NYC Children’s Services Inspections Disproportionately Impact Black, Hispanic Families

New to ClassAction.org? Read our Newswire Disclaimer

A proposed class action lawsuit alleges New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) conducts tens of thousands of invasive, traumatic and sudden entries into families’ homes each year, with Black and Hispanic families disproportionately bearing the brunt of investigators’ threats and other coercive tactics, even when no evidence is found that a child is in danger. 

Want to stay in the loop on class actions that matter to you? Sign up for ClassAction.org’s free weekly newsletter here. 

The 49-page class action lawsuit was filed by nine plaintiffs who allege the Fourth Amendment rights of well over 100 New York City families are violated by ACS each day as part of routine, warrantless home investigations for which “parents feel that they have no choice but to allow caseworkers to enter and search their homes.” During these searches, the suit says, ACS will rummage through an entire home and conduct “untrammeled inspections of families’ most private spaces,” regardless of whether a home has any connection to “whatever allegations have been made about that particular family.” 

According to the complaint, the trauma inflicted by New York’s ACS predominantly and disproportionately falls on Black and Hispanic families, as more than 80 percent of the parents and children subject to ACS inquiries are Black or Hispanic. The lawsuit relays that one out of every two Black children in New York City has been subjected to an ACS investigation—which typically lasts 60 days and involves at least one, and sometimes as many as four, home searches—by the time they turn 18. 

During a search, ACS caseworkers examine not only every room of a family’s home but rifle through their belongings and “in many cases search children’s bodies,” the lawsuit says. 

The agency itself has acknowledged the racial impact of its searches in a report that outlines what is described as a “predatory system that specifically targets Black and Brown parents,” the complaint notes. 

“These coerced searches rarely result in determinations that the children require any protection,” the suit states. “Less than 7% of investigations lead ACS to file petitions in Family Court alleging that parents committed wrongdoing of any kind.” 

The suit accuses NYC ACS caseworkers of lying to parents about their rights, threatening to call the police, and even threatening to take their children away if they are not permitted to enter and search the home. The overwhelming majority of ACS home entries and searches are conducted without a court order, without voluntary consent, and in the absence of any emergency, the filing alleges.

Although the New York Family Court Act grants ACS the ability to obtain “at all hours” a court order to enter and search a home—which must be supported by “probable cause” and specify the actions that will be taken—the agency “chooses to almost never seek these court orders,” the case says. 

“Across the nearly 53,000 investigations ACS conducted last year, it sought only 222 court orders to search families’ homes. Even assuming ACS completed only one home search during each investigation (it typically conducts several), ACS sought court orders for just 0.4% of home entries. This means over 99.5% of home searches that ACS conducts are “presumptively unreasonable” under the Fourth Amendment.” 

The case specifies that although ACS can enter a family’s home without a warrant or consent when it has grounds to believe a child is in imminent danger, the matter at hand concerns the more than 50,000 warrantless home searches the agency performs each year, affecting hundreds of thousands of children and caretakers, where no emergency grounds exist. 

“These allegations are typically non-urgent and frequently involve common occurrences, such as a child missing school without a doctor’s note, a child seen playing in a hallway, or a parent disagreeing with a school’s recommendation for special education services,” the suit expands. 

The lawsuit claims NYC ACS has failed to properly train caseworkers on families’ constitutional rights during home searches and has “created and continues to foster” a culture of “coerced acquiescence” via tactics that instill fear into parents that their children will be taken unless they bow to ACS’s demands.

“Plaintiffs’ experiences are not isolated or unusual,” the case reads. “They are consistent with and indicative of ACS’s widespread and customary practice of deploying highly Coercive Tactics to conduct warrantless searches of families’ homes in non-exigent circumstances in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” 

The lawsuit looks to cover all adult parents or legal guardians subject to an ACS investigation in which caseworkers have used, are using, or will use coercive tactics to search their home without a court order or exigent circumstances. 

Get class action lawsuit news sent to your inbox – sign up for ClassAction.org’s free weekly newsletter here.