This federal class action was brought by children in the custody of the New York City Child Welfare Administration ("CWA"), and children who, while not in the custody of CWA, are or will be at risk of abuse or neglect and whose status is known or should be known to CWA. It was filed on December 13, 1995 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs, represented by Children's Rights Inc., Lawyers for Children, and private counsel, sought class certification, declaratory and injunctive relief against both the city and the state (collectively, the defendants). The plaintiffs claimed that the defendants violated the First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, the Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment program of the Medicaid Act, the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and state law.

Specifically, the plaintiffs contend that the defendants systematically:

• failed to protect the plaintiffs from abuse and neglect and to provide them and their families with appropriate, legally required services;

• failed to appropriately accept reports of child abuse and neglect for investigation;

• failed to investigate those reports of child abuse and neglect that are accepted in the time and manner required by law;

• failed to provide mandated pre-placement preventive services to enable children at risk of being placed in foster care to remain at home safely with their families whenever possible;

• failed to provide children in need of foster care placement with the least restrictive, most family-like placements designed to meet their individual needs;

• failed to provide foster children, their birth families and their foster families with the services that are essential to ensuring that the children do not deteriorate in CWA's custody;

• failed to provide foster children with disabilities with placements and services appropriate to their individual needs and necessary to allow these children fully to participate in the City's child welfare system;

• failed to provide foster children with appropriate case management, case plans and services;

• failed to provide children for whom adoption is appropriate with services necessary to ensure that they are adopted quickly;

• failed to provide teenage children who will leave the foster care system to live on their own with services adequate to prepare them to live independently;

• failed to provide foster children with the administrative, judicial and dispositional reviews to which they are legally entitled;

• failed to provide caseworkers with sufficient training, support and supervision; and

• failed to maintain an adequate information system to monitor, track and plan for children, and to manage the child welfare system effectively.

On June 18, 1996, District Judge Robert J. Ward certified a class of children in foster care and those reported to be abused or neglected. The court also denied the defendants' motion to dismiss, interpreting children's constitutional right to protection from harm to include harm that results from unnecessary separation from parents and from extended stays in foster care without a permanent family. Marisol A. v. Giuliani, 929 F. Supp. 662 (1996). Some procedural skirmishes dealing with the defendants' interlocutory appeal followed. On September 26, 1997, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court's certification of the plaintiff class and directed that the district judge divide the classes into subclasses for organizational and management purposes. Marisol A. v Giuliani, 126 F.3d 372 (2d Cir. 1997).

In July of 1998, the parties began settlement negotiations. Over the objections of would-be intervenors representing a subclass of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youths in the custody of the city agency, the court approved separate settlement agreements with the city and the state defendants in March 1999. Marisol A. v. Giuliani, 185 F.R.D. 152 (S.D.N.Y. 1999). Objectors appealed, but on July 10, 2000, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's approval of both the city and state settlement agreements. Joel A. v. Giuliani, 218 F.3d 132 (2d Cir. 2000).

The class action settlement required the city to use independent outside child welfare experts to guide and assist it in undertaking systemic reform. The advisory panel had complete access to all aspects of the city's child welfare agency, and was empowered to provide recommendations, issue progress reports on the status of the reform effort, and determine whether the city is acting in good faith in implementing systemic reform. The city settlement was successfully concluded in 2001.

The plaintiffs returned to court in January 2001, seeking an order directing compliance by the state with specific terms of the state settlement agreement. The areas of alleged noncompliance included the failure to implement a statewide child welfare management information system. After an August 2001 evidentiary hearing, the court granted the plaintiffs' motion in part, holding that the state had acted with insufficient diligence in implementing the information management system. Marisol A. ex re. Forbes v. Giuliani, 157 F. Supp. 2d 303 (S.D.N.Y. 2001). Judge Ward extended the term of the agreement in this area, and directed that the state file semi-annual reports with the plaintiffs until the Court determined that the state had fully complied with the relevant portions of the agreement.

Very little activity appears in the docket after that ruling. The state filed a report required by the settlement agreement in July 2008, and then there was nearly a 10-year gap. In 2017, the case was reassigned to Judge George Daniels and then Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker. Also, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (“OCFS”) filed one of its required semi-annual reports stating that OCFS was taking reasonable efforts to develop and implement a diligent and sufficient information management system for child welfare needs.

A status conference was held on July 26, 2018. After that conference, the court issued an order relinquishing its jurisdiction over that portion of the settlement agreement on August 6. Since the other parts of the settlement had terminated in 2001, the case is now closed.