Foster parents lose suit over risky child placement

In federal court, a South Carolina foster family lost its damages claim after the Fourth Circuit said a state social-services worker could not be sued over a placement the family says exposed two boys to harm. A.G. brought the case on behalf of her sons, C.L.G. and C.N.G., under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the federal civil-rights law people use to sue state officials for constitutional violations.

The family said Kerry Register, an employee of the South Carolina Department of Social Services, knowingly placed in their home a foster child with a history of sexual misconduct against other children. After the placement, the family said, the child showed the boys pornography, masturbated in front of one of them and asked him to copy what he had seen.

A right the panel would not extend

The Fourth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Register on qualified-immunity grounds. That doctrine shields government officials unless existing law was already clear enough that a reasonable worker would have known the conduct was unconstitutional.

Here, the panel said the family could not point to a clearly established right that fit these facts. It noted an earlier foster-care case, but said that ruling concerned the state’s duty to protect a child in its custody, not a duty owed to foster parents or other people living in the home. On that reading, the placement itself did not violate a constitutional rule the worker should have known about.

The remedy that never arrived

The opinion is unpublished, so it does not bind future Fourth Circuit panels. Even so, it shows how quickly qualified immunity can end a case before a jury ever hears the allegations about what happened inside the home.

For families who take in children through foster care, that leaves a hard lesson: even a claim tied to child safety can run into a legal wall if the right being asserted was not already spelled out in prior cases.