New York City’s child welfare agency has agreed to pay $75,000 to Chanetto Rivers, a mother from the Bronx, whose newborn son was taken away after she legally smoked marijuana just hours before giving birth. Ms. Rivers filed a lawsuit against the city in May, alleging that the Administration for Children’s Services (A.C.S.) had targeted her due to her race, as she is Black. A.C.S. has been under scrutiny for aggressively pursuing parents for marijuana use and for its treatment of Black families.
The Bronx Defenders, Ms. Rivers’s legal team, asserted that her case marks the first instance of holding A.C.S. accountable for violating a provision of New York’s marijuana legalization law, which prohibits removing a child solely due to a parent’s marijuana use. A federal judge recently approved the agency’s offer to compensate Ms. Rivers.
In August 2021, five months after marijuana legalization, Ms. Rivers consumed marijuana at a family gathering, subsequently experiencing contractions and heading to the hospital for childbirth. During her delivery of her baby, referred to as T.W. in court documents, she was questioned about drug or alcohol consumption. When she admitted to smoking marijuana, both she and T.W. were tested without her consent, and both tested positive for marijuana.
Two days later, A.C.S. initiated a neglect case against Ms. Rivers and sought to place T.W. in foster care. A.C.S. guidelines state that the presence of marijuana in an infant’s system is insufficient grounds for removal without evidence of potential impairment, which was not established in this case. However, it took Ms. Rivers nearly a week, multiple court visits, and a judge’s order, against A.C.S.’s objections, to regain custody of T.W. and bring him home from BronxCare Health System.
Even after regaining custody, A.C.S. conducted unannounced home visits, including late at night, for an additional three months. Ms. Rivers was also required to attend parenting classes and undergo drug tests.
The lawsuit, co-filed by Bronx Defenders and Arnold & Porter, contended that A.C.S. pursued Ms. Rivers “not because A.C.S. was trying to protect T.W.” but “because Ms. Rivers is Black.” It argued that her treatment was part of a long-standing pattern of discrimination against Black families by A.C.S., some of which was documented in a 2020 audit in which A.C.S. employees themselves acknowledged institutional racism.
Despite Ms. Rivers having a previous child welfare case that resulted in the loss of custody of two older children in 2016, her legal team argued that this history was irrelevant. A.C.S. had previously cleared her to regain custody of her older children, and family court judges had ruled that the earlier case did not pose a risk to T.W.
Under the terms of the settlement between Ms. Rivers, aged 34, and the city, the city does not admit wrongdoing or acknowledge that she suffered damages. However, Ms. Rivers’s lead attorney, Niji Jain, emphasized that the city’s payment of $75,000 signifies the significance of the case’s allegations. Jain stated, “You don’t pay somebody $75,000 before any discovery is exchanged at all in the case based on allegations alone unless there is some ‘there’ there.”
The city’s Law Department stated on Thursday that it had “carefully reviewed the case and determined that this settlement was in the best interest of all parties.” A.C.S. released a statement, saying, “In all of our cases, including those with substance misuse allegations, we assess child safety on a case-by-case basis, looking at actual or potential harm to a child and the parent’s capacity to care for the child.”
While Ms. Rivers’s lawsuit pertains to an individual case, her legal team sees it as a model for others who wish to challenge family separations by A.C.S. based on marijuana use. It also highlights the documented history of disparate treatment of Black families by A.C.S. Ms. Rivers issued a statement through her lawyers, saying, “I didn’t just bring this lawsuit for myself, but for every Black family that A.C.S. has ripped apart. They know what they did was wrong. And now, they’re on notice.”
