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Texas officials are fighting tooth and nail against court-ordered, potentially costly reforms to the state’s foster care system — a position that’s drawn fierce criticism from child welfare advocates.

It was early July 2001, and Trish Virgil was going to make a lemon meringue pie. “In our family, 12 years old meant that you get to finally learn how to make homemade pies,” she says now, smiling.

The state’s track record for its Child Protective Services is a tumultuous one. A couple of months ago, a series of stories were circulating around a massive federal lawsuit filed against the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services, which oversees foster care, adoption and daycare licensing in Texas.

Houston police found the 16-year-old foster child in a park in early November 2013, just a few days after she ran away from a residential treatment center in northwest Houston.

Last month a federal judge ordered Texas to clean up its foster care system. U.S. District Judge Janis Jack’s findings were scathing. She said that children in Texas’s long-term foster care have been subjected to “years of abuse [and] neglect.” She added that they had been systemically denied their civil rights,reports The Texas Tribune. In response, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has appealed the reforms ordered by the federal judge.

Finding that foster children are “shuttled through a system where rape, abuse, psychotropic medication, and instability are the norm,” a federal court recently ruled that Texans are violating the constitutional rights of our foster children by subjecting them to an unreasonable risk of harm. Gov. Abbott should boldly call a special legislative session to reform foster care and protect these children.

It was early July 2001, and Trish Virgil was going to make a lemon meringue pie. “In our family, 12 years old meant that you get to finally learn how to make homemade pies,” she says now, smiling.

San Angelo Psychiatrist Sentenced to Serve 71 Months in Federal Prison, also Fined $100,000 and Ordered to Pay More Than $1.8 Million in Restitution

In true public-health emergency situations, state public-health authorities can quarantine and isolate individuals in order to prevent the spread of communicable and dangerous diseases and infections; these are public-health officials who issue the declarations, not doctors and nurses. There is substantial constitutional authority cited by state and federal governments in support of this power.1

Attorneys for an Irving mother whose three children drowned in a swimming pool have filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against the Dallas County Child Protective Services Unit of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Service.