Lawsuit Filed to End Foster Care Fees in Georgia

Today, Equal Justice Under Law filed a Complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia challenging the state’s unconstitutional foster care fees scheme that charges exorbitant and arbitrary fees to parents living in poverty whose children are in foster care. The lawsuit alleges that Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) removed children from more than 700 families between 2018 and 2022 solely for reasons of poverty, and then turned around and charged parents of those same families unaffordable monthly child support amounts which served to further delay or altogether prevent family reunification.

The lawsuit’s lead plaintiff, Annalinda Martinez, is a mother of eight whose six eldest children were taken from her by the State without her consent. In 2018, after discovering her ex-boyfriend was abusing one of her children, Annalinda took the brave step of reporting her ex-boyfriend and then testifying against him to protect herself and her children. The ex-boyfriend was incarcerated, but without his income, Annalinda and her children couldn’t afford rent and were forced to spend the night in Annalinda’s van.

Desperate for help and confident in her home state’s ability and willingness to provide services, Annalinda went to the Georgia DFCS office and told them her story, including that she and her then-six children had spent the night in her van. The same day, without any discussion with Annalinda, DFCS filed papers to have all six of her children removed from her custody, citing homelessness as the reason for removal. Annalinda went to DFCS to ask for help starting a new chapter with her family. The only thing DFCS helped her start was a year-long nightmare of family separation and mounting debt.

After making it clear to Annalinda that she would not regain custody of her children unless she found stable housing that DFCS deemed suitable, the agency hit her with a whopping child support bill — $472 per month. DFCS knew Annalinda had no consistent employment and knew she was homeless; DFCS took into account none of those factors when recommending child support. The funds were not going directly to Annalinda’s children; they were being used to reimburse DFCS for foster care maintenance payments that the agency is statutorily obligated to pay foster families. The fees also made it so that Annalinda could not get her head above water, let alone secure the three-bedroom home DFCS insisted she needed to be reunited with her children.

After a year and a half of this, DFCS and the Georgia family court system pressured Annalinda to surrender her parental rights, telling her that it was what was best for her children. Even after surrendering her parental rights and having two of her children age out of foster care and two more be adopted, Annalinda’s monthly bill has been the same: $472 per month, now with interest. At its highest, Annalinda’s debt amounted to over $13,000 of unpayable fees. A crowdsourced online fundraiser helped Annalinda put a dent in the debt, but she’s still struggling and no closer to reunification with her children. Plus, in an effort to spur collections (a practice Equal Justice Under Law has already identified as punitive, discriminatory, and ineffective), the state has threatened to suspended Annalinda’s license, revoked her passport, and put her in jail.

Instead of using its resources to connect struggling families to housing and support, the state of Georgia and its agencies are choosing to separate families and then saddle those same families with massive debts. These practices are not only illogical, ineffective, and unfair, but they are also unconstitutional. As Equal Justice Under Law’s Complaint alleges, the DCFS fees violate the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Constitution by infringing on the fundamental right to parent, treating similarly-situated parents differently, failing to consider ability to pay when enforcing the fees, and failing to adjust or end the fee payments for children who age out of foster care or who are adopted and no longer under state care.

The State of Georgia did change its policies regarding child support collection for children in foster care in 2024, after federal guidance advised that collecting these fees from parents living in poverty “can negatively impact a family that is trying to develop and maintain familial and economic stability to reunify with their child.” The guidance itself came after a 2021 NPR investigation revealed that fees like those charged to Annalinda in Georgia were being almost exclusively charged to poor families, and disproportionately charged to parents of color. The same investigation found that states spend more money trying to collect these payments than they end up collecting, and that enforcement of these fees almost always delays or prevents family reunification. But the changes Georgia made in 2024 are not retroactive, and 4,000 parents, including Annalinda, remain on the hook for their debts, much of which is years-old and allegedly for the benefit of children who are no longer even in state care.

Only seven states across the country (Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Jersey) have passed legislation aimed at forgiving child support debts for parents whose kids are in foster care, and even those states’ policies do not fully forgive all debts. Georgia is not one of those states, and its agencies continue to target Annalinda and other parents, despite new federal and state guidance, despite the state’s own recognition of an abundance of literature and research showing the myriad ways in which these practices are harmful, despite the fact that enforcement of this debt delays and prevents family reunification, and despite the fact that these practices undoubtedly prolong and exacerbate poverty among families who are already incredibly vulnerable.

Equal Justice Under Law and our partners in Georgia are committed to ending this discriminatory and unconstitutional system in Georgia and ultimately, across the country. Annalinda and parents like her should never be separated from their children for reasons of poverty and they especially should not be charged hundreds or thousands of dollars monthly in fees that defy all principles of logic, fairness, and equal justice. The American legal system promises to treat all people the same, regardless of wealth. In places like Georgia, where we see the legal system targeting and punishing people for their poverty, we have no choice but to intervene.

To follow along with this case, visit the case webpage here. Our partners in Georgia have more information and ways to help, and organizations like Families Not Fees are leading the charge on aggregating data and state-based resources.