Tennessee Foster Care Lawsuit: Claims, Plaintiffs, and Conditions

The Tennessee foster care lawsuit is a federal class action filed in May 2025 alleging that the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services keeps thousands of children in dangerous placements without adequate food, bedding, education, or medical care. Filed on behalf of 13 foster children (later expanded to 19) and seeking to represent more than 9,000 children in state custody, the case is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. A federal judge allowed key claims to move forward in April 2026 while dismissing others, and class certification is still pending.¹

Who Filed the Case and Against Whom

The complaint was filed on May 19, 2025, by A Better Childhood, a national nonprofit led by Marcia Robinson Lowry, alongside the law firms Willkie Farr & Gallagher, Bass Berry & Sims, Wang Hecker, and the Barbara McDowell Social Justice Center. Bass Berry & Sims, based in Nashville, serves as local counsel.²³

The defendants are DCS Commissioner Margie Quin, Deputy Commissioner Carla Aaron, and Deputy Commissioner of Child Programs Karen Jointer Bryant. An amended complaint on June 16, 2025, added six more named children, bringing the total to 19. A second amended complaint filed on November 13, 2025, made only minor editorial changes.¹

What the Lawsuit Alleges

The 74-page complaint accuses DCS of “warehousing” children in facilities that lack basic necessities including adequate food, bedding, soap, and potable water, and of contracting with institutions that have documented histories of physical, mental, and sexual abuse. Children are described as shuffled between temporary placements indefinitely rather than placed in stable, permanent homes.⁴¹

The suit describes DCS assessment centers, designed for stays of no more than 30 days, as holding children far longer under conditions the complaint calls “draconian.” Young abuse victims are allegedly placed alongside teenagers accused of crimes, staff reportedly use pepper spray to control children, and children are said to be transported to medical appointments in shackles.⁵

The complaint also alleges DCS fails to deliver legally required education and health care services and that caseworkers are “overworked and undertrained,” with caseloads more than double what they handled during an earlier period of court oversight.⁴⁶

Individual stories anchor the complaint. “Darnell,” a 15-year-old in DCS custody since age eight, has lived in at least 14 placements; his only Christmas wish to a legal advocate was a stick of deodorant. “Amara” and “Zane,” ages eight and nine, were separated for two years and assigned seven different caseworkers over eight years after being placed in a home where they suffered sexual and physical abuse. “Jasmine,” 15, was sent to a residential facility more than 1,500 miles from Tennessee and held there for over 18 months; DCS reportedly threw away her clothes without replacing them and held at least 17 planning meetings without her, despite her legal right to attend.⁵⁴

The Legal Claims

The plaintiffs invoke 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, and the Medicaid Act, and raise substantive due process claims under the Fourteenth Amendment. A separate subclass covers foster children with disabilities, arguing DCS systematically fails to provide community-based services for children with emotional, psychological, cognitive, or physical disabilities.¹⁴

What the Plaintiffs Want

The plaintiffs ask the court to certify a class of all children in DCS foster care and to issue a permanent injunction requiring the state to overhaul the system. Their specific demands include producing an adequate individualized case plan for every child within 60 days of entering care, ensuring all children receive necessary medical and therapeutic services, placing children only in homes capable of meeting their needs, prioritizing keeping siblings together, recruiting and retaining trained caseworkers with manageable caseloads, and providing community-based services for children with disabilities.⁷

Where the Case Stands

When the lawsuit was filed, a DCS spokesperson directed questions to the Tennessee Attorney General’s office, which declined to comment.⁵

The defendants moved to dismiss on September 5, 2025, arguing the court lacked jurisdiction, that plaintiffs lacked standing, that the requested relief would require a federal court to manage the state’s entire child welfare system, and that plaintiffs failed to state a viable legal claim.¹

On April 7, 2026, District Judge Aleta Arthur Trauger granted the motion in part and denied it in part. The court:

Allowed the ADA and Rehabilitation Act claims to proceed.
Partially dismissed the substantive due process claim.
Dismissed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act claim entirely.
Dismissed the Medicaid Act claim entirely.

Separately, on March 11, 2026, plaintiffs filed an emergency motion for a preliminary injunction to stop DCS from placing children in temporary housing that fails to meet basic needs. The court denied that motion on April 20, 2026, finding plaintiffs had not shown the 19 named children were at imminent risk of being placed in the challenged settings. Class certification remains pending, and the case continues.¹

The Brian A. Precedent

This is not Tennessee’s first federal foster care class action. In May 2000, Brian A. v. Sundquist (later Brian A. v. Haslam) was filed in the same Nashville federal court by Children’s Rights, Inc., alleging many of the same problems: excessive institutional placements, high caseworker turnover, oversized caseloads, and frequent moves. The state settled in July 2001 without admitting liability and agreed to sweeping reforms, including strict caseload caps, 160 hours of pre-service training for new case managers, a 30-day limit on emergency and temporary facility stays, and a prohibition on placing children under six in group care with limited exceptions. The settlement also committed DCS to $4 million annually for five years in implementation funding plus a $2 million annual contingency fund.⁸⁹

In April 2016, the district court ruled that DCS had met all mandated benchmarks. Court jurisdiction ended entirely on February 25, 2019. The 2025 lawsuit argues that progress unraveled after oversight ended, alleging the system has deteriorated to a state “even worse than it was in 2000.” Marcia Robinson Lowry, who leads the 2025 litigation, was also an attorney in the original Brian A. case.⁸⁴⁶

The Conditions Driving the Lawsuit

Children Sleeping in DCS Offices

In 2025, 445 children slept in DCS offices, a roughly 400% increase from the 89 children who did so in 2024. The average stay was nearly eight days; the longest was 102 days. DCS attributes the rise to an influx of children with complex behavioral and mental health needs and to the closure of several transitional homes since late 2024, with the number dropping from 39 at the start of 2024 to 33 by early 2026. As of early 2026, 134 Tennessee foster children were placed out of state.¹⁰

Commissioner Quin has stated that DCS does not permit hotel stays or short-term rentals for foster children and that children staying in offices are provided with bedding, attend school if enrolled, and are taken outdoors during the day.¹¹

The December 2025 Comptroller Audit

A 213-page performance audit released by the Tennessee Comptroller in December 2025, covering September 2022 through September 2025, catalogued what auditors called “new and persistent failures” at DCS. Key findings:

Investigations of child abuse and neglect by adults in positions of authority, such as teachers and coaches, were “insufficient and untimely.”
DCS had 192 child fatality cases in 2023 and 168 in 2024. While basic information was posted within five days, the department often failed to follow up with final investigation results, and it disclosed no near fatalities after October 2023 because it lacked a physician reviewer for nearly the entire period after the previous one left in December 2023.
Temporary shelter conditions were inconsistent and substandard, including a Nashville facility with mattresses on the floor, holes in the walls, and graffiti, and a Shelby County facility designed for nine beds that housed 15 children.
Medical and dental screenings for children in custody were delayed.

Four of the audit’s 13 findings repeated issues flagged in a prior report.¹²¹³

Foster Home Shortage and Workforce Strain

Tennessee has roughly 9,100 children in foster care and about 5,000 approved foster families, leaving a gap of more than 3,000 homes.¹⁴ Federal data shows that by fiscal year 2024, roughly 60% of children who had been in care for more than two years had experienced three or more placement changes.¹⁵

DCS employees have reported severe burnout. One wrote in an internal survey, “We spend more nights in offices and transitional homes than we do in our beds.”¹² Commissioner Quin has previously said the department reduced case manager vacancies from a high of 620 to 268, capped first-year social worker caseloads at 10, and saw a decline in caseworker turnover.¹⁶ DCS employs more than 3,800 workers and operates with an annual budget exceeding $1.2 billion in state and federal funds.⁵

The State’s Response Outside Court

While contesting the lawsuit, Tennessee has moved on several fronts. In August 2024, DCS and the Governor’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative launched “Every Child TN,” a statewide program aimed at recruiting and retaining foster families, preventing family separation, and supporting youth aging out of care. By the end of November 2024, the program had generated nearly 1,300 inquiries from prospective foster parents and helped meet the needs of 568 children.¹⁷¹⁸

In February 2026, Governor Bill Lee signed a joint proclamation joining the Trump Administration’s “A Home for Every Child” initiative, which aims for a one-to-one ratio of foster homes to children in care.¹⁹¹¹¹²¹⁰

A legislative response, the “Stable Homes for Foster Youth Act” (SB 1644), was introduced in January 2026. It would have prohibited housing foster children in vehicles, offices, or hotels for more than 24 hours and mandated a real-time tracking system for foster children’s locations. The bill was declared dead as of April 2026.²⁰

A Separate Lawsuit Against DCS

The foster care class action is distinct from a related federal lawsuit filed on June 26, 2024, by Disability Rights Tennessee, the Youth Law Center, and Sanford Heisler Sharp. That case accuses DCS of systematically abusing children with disabilities within the juvenile justice system, alleging solitary confinement, excessive pepper spray, denial of legally mandated education and mental health care, and the incentivizing of peer-on-peer violence through “bounties” of ramen noodles. It seeks to represent more than 1,000 youth with disabilities and alleges violations of the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.²¹²² The two cases share a defendant and overlapping themes, but they are separate proceedings with different plaintiff groups and different claims.

1
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2
The Imprint. Tennessee Sued Again Over Foster Care Conditions
3
WKRN. Motion for Emergency Preliminary Injunction Filing
4
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5
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9
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12
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13
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14
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15
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16
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17
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18
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19
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20
BillTrack50. Stable Homes for Foster Youth Act
21
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22
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