Federal Judges Seek To Manage Foster-Care System: ACLJ Urges Supreme Court To Stop Overreach

What happens when a federal judge decides he can run a state agency better than the people the state’s voters elected? In Morrisey v. Jonathan R., the Fourth Circuit answered that question in a way that should concern every American who values self-government. Now the ACLJ is asking the Supreme Court to step in.

We filed an amicus brief urging the Court to take up this case, which involves a sweeping federal decree over West Virginia’s foster-care system. The plaintiffs aren’t asking a court to stop a specific unlawful act. They want a top-to-bottom restructuring of the state’s child-welfare system: 47 separate demands covering caseloads, hiring, training, foster-home recruitment, placements, and outcome targets. A court-appointed monitor would police compliance, and a federal judge would have the last word on whether the state is making progress fast enough.

The Fourth Circuit didn’t just allow this. It declared that federal courts “can and must” impose this kind of regime when systemic violations are alleged. It even described the judge’s role in such cases as “more like a manager or policy planner than a judge.” That is not what Article III of the Constitution creates.

Our brief makes two points.

First, child welfare belongs to the states. Long before ratification, the colonies and then the states built the systems that care for dependent children. The Supreme Court has said for well over a century that domestic relations belong to the states and not to the federal government. Federal courts can and should remedy proven violations of federal law. But when a remedy would displace a state’s control over a core function of government, federalism demands the most exacting justification.

Second, equity has never permitted this remedy. In Trump v. CASA (2025), the Supreme Court held that federal courts may grant only the kinds of equitable relief that had a founding-era antecedent. That was the very argument we made to the Court in our brief on behalf of West Virginia. Universal injunctions failed that test, even though they had become common. Managerial decrees fail it too.

The Fourth Circuit relied on decades of modern structural injunctions, but that is the very reasoning CASA rejected. A power doesn’t become legitimate because judges have exercised it often.

This case is not about whether children in foster care matter. They do. It is about who decides how a state cares for them. Federal courts can enforce federal law, but they cannot become the permanent superintendent of a state agency, setting priorities, directing spending, and rewriting policy as they see fit. That is the work of legislatures and executives, who answer to the voters.

If judges can claim that power whenever a problem is labeled “systemic,” there is little left of the separation of powers or the balance between the states and the national government.

We are urging the Supreme Court to grant review and restore those boundaries. The ACLJ will continue to defend the constitutional limits on judicial power.

Sign our petition: Defeat Rogue Judges – Defend the Constitution.