Class Action Targets NYC Agency Over ‘Extrajudicial’ Child Seizures

Lawsuit Challenges New York City’s Frequent ‘Emergency Removals’ of Black and Latino Kids from Home

A federal lawsuit filed Thursday accuses New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) of routinely separating children and parents through unjustifiable and unconstitutional means — abrupt removals that are mischaracterized as emergencies and executed without court orders. 

“These seizures — which predominantly and disproportionally target the City’s Black and Latino families — frequently occur in the middle of the night, involve armed police officers, and result in ACS caseworkers pulling terrified children out of their beds,” reads the filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District in Manhattan. “Children have characterized the experience as ‘like being kidnapped.’”

The class action suit was filed on behalf of parents and children who were separated. It cites The Imprint’s investigation published in December, which revealed that so-called “emergency removals” are standard practice in New York City and across the country, amounting to between 70% and 95% of all entries into foster care. And although the U.S. Supreme Court declared more than 50 years ago that such removals require court-approval — with limited exceptions — the vast majority take place well before a judge has weighed evidence from caseworkers. 

Thursday’s legal complaint describes this practice as “shockingly” frequent in New York City. Between 50% and 60% of all removals there are conducted this way, lawyers for the plaintiffs state, even though many of the cases do not involve “imminent risk” to the child’s life or health. 

As a result, plaintiffs’ attorneys argue, the practice bypasses “fundamental constitutional protections, exploits well‑documented decision‑making biases favoring family separation, and inflicts lasting harm on children and families.”

The suit underscores the racial disproportionality among separated families, which state officials have denoted as “extreme” in large swaths of New York. City data shows nearly 90% of roughly 1,400 emergency removals in the 2025 fiscal year involved kids identified as “Black non-Hispanic” or “Hispanic/Latinx.” The city’s overall child population is just 56% Black and Latino.

“After seizing children,” the legal complaint states, “ACS regularly fails to provide information to frightened parents about where their children will be taken, who will take care of them, or when they will see them again.”

In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for the Administration for Children’s Services said it is reviewing the lawsuit with the city’s Law Department. The spokesperson also defended the agency’s use of emergency removals. 

“ACS is committed to keeping families together whenever that is safely possible, said Marisa Kaufman in an email. “Emergency removals are only considered in circumstances where all other options are ruled out, and teams of highly trained child protective staff determine that a child is in imminent danger and that there is not enough time to get a court order.” 

Kaufman also said that in more than 97% of child protection cases, children are never removed from their homes.

Emergency removals have been the subject of controversy for years in New York City. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio and his child welfare commissioner defended emergency removals after the practice increased, prompting critical scrutiny from the city council. 

This week’s lawsuit was filed by civil rights and legal advocacy groups representing low-income parents and children, including New York’s Legal Aid Society, the Family Justice Law Center, the Center for Constitutional Rights, as well as family defense clinics at New York University and City University of New York. The corporate firms Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP are also part of the team.

“No family forgets the moment it is torn apart,” their complaint begins. 

They detail the cases of five families in the 94-page filing. Following emergency removals of children, “distress, trauma, and psychological damage far outlast the terrifying moments of a child’s seizure and resulting period of family separation,” the lawsuit states. It further notes that at least 25% of the time, judges reverse the child welfare agency’s initial decision to remove, and order the child’s return.

The named plaintiffs in the case are two single mothers from the Bronx, and their children. One of the mothers, identified in the filing as 36-year-old Denise Archer  — no real names are used — describes how she was separated from her three kids twice without court orders. The emergency removals took place after she sought help for her daughter, who has autism and ADHD. 

Her attorneys said Archer was not available for an interview, but in a joint press release with other plaintiffs, the Bronx community advocate, a former foster youth, described losing her own children to foster care.

“ACS workers are wolves in sheep’s clothing, and you have to be very cautious with them when you’re a Black or Latino parent,” said Archer. “I tried to go to ACS to seek some type of assistance when my family was going through a hard time, and it turned into an almost three-year separation where I had to fight every step of the way to get my kids returned home.”

Common practice nationwide 

More than 50 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Stanley v. Illinois that parents are entitled to a hearing on their fitness prior to having their children taken by the government. Exceptions can be made if the child is in imminent danger and would be harmed if left at home until a hearing could take place. 

Yet, as The Imprint revealed last year, the vast majority of foster care entries begin as an emergency removal in states and counties across the country. 

In 2024 and 2025, they accounted for between 86% and 100% of all child welfare removals in Texas, Illinois and Washington, according to administrative data obtained by The Imprint. 

Anecdotal evidence from a judge in Fairfax County, Virginia, and a case review by legal scholars in Fulton County, Georgia, found that 90% or more removals in those counties were executed prior to a full court hearing. 

New York City is a rare jurisdiction that makes this data public: One report shows 54% for the first quarter of 2025.

Legal advocates say removing a child when a true emergency doesn’t exist denies parents the opportunity to advocate for themselves — or to have a lawyer speak on their behalf — until a hearing can be held, often days or weeks after losing their child.

If Atlanta mother DeCharae Key had been afforded this opportunity prior to removal, she told The Imprint last year, her daughter would not have become a ward of the state of Georgia. 

“It would have been very different, because I would have had a chance to explain myself,” she said. 

Key is one of two Georgia mothers who have also been challenging the practice in court. In both cases their families were subjected to emergency removals when — by the agency’s own admission under oath — the children were safe and their parents were cooperating with child welfare case plans. 

Though the children were eventually returned to their families, the mothers have appealed their cases to higher courts. As in the New York lawsuit, they’re seeking systemic reform — and are asking the Georgia Supreme Court to bar child welfare caseworkers from relying on emergency removals.

The plaintiffs in New York are seeking a jury trial, financial damages for the plaintiffs, and changes to policy and practice. They argue that the city’s practice violates the children’s and parents’ due process rights and their rights to be free from racial discrimination and unreasonable seizure by the government under the Constitution’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. 

The plaintiffs seek to represent a class that includes children and parents who have, will, or could face emergency removals. Black and Latino parents and children are also included as a subclass for the racial discrimination claim. 

Last week, in a different federal court in Manhattan, a panel of appeals court judges revived a closely watched lawsuit brought by a Bronx father who alleged that New York City’s child welfare agency violated his family’s constitutional rights by needlessly taking custody of his infant son on an emergency basis and without a court order. 

One of the legal advocates filing this week’s separate class-action said the recent court action should send a signal to child welfare leaders around the country, not just in New York. 
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“The message to the head of every child protective agency in the country is that they should be sitting down with their lawyers and asking, ‘How do they ensure that their staffs are complying with constitutional requirements?’” said Chris Gottlieb, an assistant professor at the New York University School of Law. “That’s both because it’s good for children, and because if they don’t, they and their caseworkers are going to be liable.”

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