Lawyers for the state asked the Fifth Circuit—the nation’s most right-wing appellate court—to put a stop to Jack’s oversight. And these weren’t just any attorneys. In 2023 Abbott appeared to have abandoned his previous position that the state should comply with Jack’s order. Instead, he secured $6 million
from the Legislature to hire five $1,300-an-hour private lawyers from megafirm Gibson Dunn to work alongside Attorney General Ken Paxton’s defense team. Notably, four of the five had clerked for Fifth Circuit judges, including Allyson Ho, who is also the wife of justice
James Ho, a Donald Trump appointee known for writing unusually partisan and intemperate judicial opinions. (James Ho did not serve on the three-judge panel that booted Jack, but he may choose to hear the case on appeal before the full Fifth Circuit, as federal judges are
apparently allowed to decide when they should recuse themselves.)
The attorneys for the foster kids warned the court that the state was “asking for permission to keep children in danger indefinitely.” HHSC had shown “shocking dereliction” in its duties, they wrote. The state charges a unit within HHSC called Provider Investigations with the particularly delicate task of looking into allegations of abuse and neglect of about a hundred developmentally disabled children. It is responsible for kids who may be extremely vulnerable to repeated harm because they lack natural defenses and may not even be able to verbally communicate that they’re being abused. But according to the court-appointed monitors, Provider Investigations frequently showed an “utter disregard for children’s safety.” Investigators didn’t interview children promptly, or sometimes at all, after alleged physical or sexual abuse. Reports often took a year or longer to complete, leaving disabled kids “exposed to danger that in certain instances caused them terrible suffering and harm.”
The court record abounds with disturbing accounts. One of the worst involves “Child C,” a fourteen-year-old mostly nonverbal girl with an IQ of 55. During the year Child C spent at C3 Christian Academy in Grand Prairie, a group home in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, she was shocked with a Taser, sexually abused, and hit so hard by a staff member that her jaw was broken in two places. A C3 employee dropped her off at a hospital the next day. She ran away from the home and twice attempted to hang herself with a sheet tied around her neck. She communicated to police that she was frequently punched. Despite twelve investigations into this abuse over the course of a year, HHSC employees missed warning sign after warning sign. A cop who was called to C3 noted that an employee of the group home—out on bond for felony stalking—was wearing an ankle monitor. One investigator dryly noted in a report, “It is a concern that the agency is employing registered sex offenders.”
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