Updated at 8:10 p.m. to reflect 5th Circuit's stay of Judge Jack's order.

AUSTIN — A federal appeals court late Friday granted Texas a temporary stay of a trial judge's final edict that ordered sweeping and rapid changes to the long-term housing, treatment and support of abused and neglected children in Texas.

Earlier in the day, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack of Corpus Christi spelled out numerous remedies Texas must make, including a much better-distributed and managed array of foster homes and treatment center beds and a push within the next five months to protect other kids by putting all sexually aggressive foster children into "single-child placements."

Jack also ordered that children who enter the "permanent managing conservatorship" of the state must if possible continue to have legal representation and regular visits from a Child Protective Services worker.

The state, though, said Jack's order would disrupt existing arrangements and force it to immediately move children out of group homes and other "congregate care" settings.

After state Attorney General Ken Paxton sought a temporary stay of Jack's order, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Friday imposed a temporary halt to her ordered remedies.

"A temporary, administrative stay is hereby entered in this case to provide sufficient time to receive any opposition and fairly consider whether a formal stay pending appeal should issue or whether this temporary stay should be dissolved," the appeals court ruled.

In her final order, which was long-awaited and should bring a class-action suit that has lingered for nearly seven years close to its climax, Jack said she's not buying state arguments that she should stand down and that she exaggerated some of the horrible conditions she described.

"Two years and one legislative session later, the foster care system of Texas remains broken," she wrote.

Many recent actions by the Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott's administration on CPS and foster care "are indeed admirable," Jack said.

But they didn't erase violations of the children's "substantive due process" right under the 14th Amendment to be free from unreasonable risk of harm caused by the state, she said. Jack found the state liable for violating the kids' rights in December 2015.

"Policies not practiced are of no value, and voluntary conduct of a defendant after the beginning of a suit cannot deprive a court of the power to order relief," Jack said.

Her order mowed down objection after objection from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. While some of the remedial actions may cost money, Jack said some may actually cost less than the amounts already budgeted by lawmakers. For instance, high turnover among CPS workers poses "significant costs to the state in terms of recruiting, training, and lost productivity," she said. Stabilizing the workforce could save money over time, she hinted.

Within two hours, Paxton's office filed notice with the federal clerk's office in Corpus Christi, where Jack sits, that the state will appeal her order.

Just over a year ago, The Dallas Morning News editorial board named Jack its Texan of the Year.

In a written statement, Paxton called Jack's ruling "misguided."

The Legislature passed and Abbott signed "landmark legislation last year to fund improvements in Texas' foster care system," he said. "Unfunded and unrealistic mandates ordered by an unelected federal judge are misguided."

Previously, Abbott and other state GOP leaders contended that Jack overreached and overstated risks of harm. They cast the suit, brought by the New York-based group Children's Rights and pro bono lawyers in Houston and Dallas, as an unnecessary infringement on state's rights.

"The case should be dismissed," Abbott said as he signed a package of CPS and foster care bills at the department's headquarters in late May.

But Children's Rights founder Marcia Robinson Lowry, who is now with the group A Better Childhood, said she's studied nearly 20 states' foster-care systems. Texas' is right up there with the worst, she said.

"It's a horrible system," Lowry said. Texas has been just as recalcitrant as it was in a federal suit over improving prison conditions in the 1990s, she added.

"Federal judges have an obligation to declare when systems are operating in an unconstitutional way, and that's what Judge Jack has done here — and she's done it very carefully," Lowry said.

Her co-counsel in the case, Paul Yetter of Houston, praised Jack's order as "a roadmap to fix the system and protect these at-risk youth."

There are about 10,700 Texas children in long-term foster care.

The state, under three protective services commissioners and two GOP gubernatorial administrations, has fiercely contested the suit. In addition to appealing to the 5th Circuit, Paxton rushed Friday to seek a stay of Jack's order during the appeal, which could take 12 to 18 months or even longer.

That sets in motion a legal drama in the next month or so. The question will be whether all, parts or none of Jack's remedies take effect while Paxton pursues his appeal. Then the mostly conservative appeals court in New Orleans will decide if she gets to closely monitor the state's performance — if so, probably for years. Former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, appointed Jack to the federal bench.

One of the biggest costs of compliance for the state will be in expanding CPS "conservatorship" caseworkers' options when they try to place a child removed from his or her birth family because of abuse and neglect.

Last January, the department identified shortages of foster homes in areas such as Collin and Denton counties and a dearth of residential treatment center beds in those counties as well as Dallas, among other regions.

The department's court filing pointed to an 11.2 percent increase in foster care payments — to $940.5 million over the next two years, including federal funds. The state's share of that will increase by 7.9 percent, to $381.5 million, the memo indicated.

"The Legislature supported a historic funding increase for rates for foster care services providers in the legacy and redesigned systems," the state's memo said.

Jack's orders for improving foster care

But Jack said it hasn't done nearly enough, fast enough.

"Defendants have known about the Court's concerns regarding the placement array for over two years and the deficiencies persist," she wrote.

By June, she ordered the department to update the January 2017 "needs assessment" to zero in on two recurring problems — the breaking up of sibling groups and the threats posed by sexually aggressive children, most of them victims of sexual abuse themselves.

Jack told the department to provide data on which homes in each county might take in sibling groups of various sizes and to do an inventory of how many sexually aggressive foster children there are in each county, and whether the county has "a deficit or surplus of single-child homes."

She also required it to immediately establish a "tracking mechanism" on how many children of all types — biological, adopted, foster — are in a placement with a long-term foster child. The agency must publish this information on its website by May and update it quarterly.

It was not immediately clear whether Jack adopted recommendations by her special masters that the state quickly would have to develop a plan for adding foster homes and treatment beds in different parts of the state where it has projected there will be shortages as of Aug. 31, the end of the state fiscal year. In shortage areas, the state needs new foster homes for 3,691 children and new residential treatment center beds for 1,256 youngsters, according to a Dallas Morning News analysis.

She cited evidence submitted at a December 2014 trial of the case showing that 60 percent of children were placed out of the county, and 39 percent out of the CPS region, where they live.

"The inadequate array results in children not being placed with their siblings due to the lack of placement resources," she wrote Friday. "This directly contravenes established professional standards and Texas' own policy."

Jack limited the caseloads of CPS conservatorship workers to between 14 and 17 children each. As urged by special masters Kevin Ryan and Francis McGovern, she eliminated "I See You Workers." They pay monthly visits on children placed far from home -- and from their regular CPS worker. The judge turned them into regular conservatorship workers, with the same caseload limit.

She also made the caseload limit apply to individual workers and not be counted as an average. She had previously found that the protective services department counted average workers and included fictional people.

Jack also ordered improvements to long-term foster children's health care. She demanded that they have better ability to report maltreatment, via landlines she ordered be installed at all foster-care placements that would connect kids with the Texas Abuse Hotline. And she ordered the department to request that attorneys ad litem be appointed for long-term foster children. It also must present a plan for how the lawyers would be paid.

The order did not specify or limit the department to any particular idea for supplying more attorneys ad litem. Jack simply said she'd consider the department's proposed plan and decide whether it is acceptable.

Last fall, Jack ordered the state and the plaintiffs into mediation, and there have been some preliminary meetings, overseen by McGovern, a Duke law professor who for many months served as a special master. She appointed Ryan, the other special master, who earlier ran New Jersey's child welfare system, and Texas Appleseed executive director Deborah Fowler of Austin to monitor the state's compliance. They are to file semiannual reports with Jack.

The judge said she'd retain jurisdiction over the class-action suit for three years after Ryan and Fowler have certified that the state has fully complied with her orders.

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