AUSTIN — Texas has spent more than $7 million fighting a class-action lawsuit over foster care.

Since 2011, three state agencies have spent nearly $6.6 million in lawyers' and other state staff members' time and on travel, transcription services and other expenses related to the federal suit, according to data obtained by The Dallas Morning News under Texas' open records law.

And that doesn’t count an additional $650,000 the Department of Family and Protective Services has been forced to pay for salary and travel expenses of two court-appointed officials recommending an action plan to a federal judge.

The state lost badly at the trial level last year. U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack of Corpus Christi ruled that because Texas has such a drastic shortage of conservatorship caseworkers and foster homes, and is so lax at policing foster-care vendors, children are at grave risk of harm. Thus, the state has violated their 14th Amendment rights, she said. State officials, while acknowledging the system needs work, have appealed.

Some child advocates and lawyers who brought the suit on behalf of 12,000 children in long-term foster care find Texas’ all-out resistance — and indifference to millions in legal defense costs — disheartening.

"We'd like to see state leaders quickly put the legal battles in the rearview mirror and focus on helping kids,” said Kate Murphy of Texans Care for Children. The group was founded by the late Phil Strickland of Dallas, a longtime lobbyist for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

Paul Yetter of Houston, who was the plaintiffs' lead lawyer at a trial in the case two years ago, said that the state has not only a dismal track record in caring for foster children but newly disclosed problems with conducting timely child-abuse investigations.

"Given that innocent children’s lives are at stake, the state should be focused on fixing its broken system, not spending millions to defend it,” he said. “That money would pay for finding ways to keep good caseworkers from quitting, doing better investigations and not losing children at risk."

Spokesmen for Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, though, insisted the legal costs were necessary. They also asserted that only the state itself, free of judicial interference, can fix Texas’ foster-care system.

“The problems at [the department] will not be fixed by a federal judge or out-of-state consultants,” said Abbott press secretary John Wittman. “These problems must be fixed by overhauling the system, which is exactly why Governor Abbott has installed Commissioner [Henry “Hank”] Whitman and fully supports his plan, which puts Texas’ children first.”

He was referring to Whitman's emergency request to spend $144.7 million in the remaining nine months of this fiscal year. That would cover $12,000 pay raises for Child Protective Services caseworkers and special investigators, other raises for CPS managers and the hiring of 829 additional CPS employees.

GOP legislative leaders have yet to approve Whitman’s request. It mainly is aimed at correcting glaring deficiencies in CPS’ initial investigations, though 105 of the new workers would be “conservatorship caseworkers” who nurture foster children and appear on their behalf in court.

Paxton spokesman Marc Rylander said that Abbott, Whitman and lawmakers have made it “a top priority” to fix protective services in next year’s legislative session, and that Jack went too far in her ruling.

“Our current system does not violate the Constitution,” Rylander said. “If the plaintiffs complain about wasting resources on defending against its lawsuit, they should drop their lawsuit and stop using Texas children as hostages for their policy negotiation.”

As The News reported in June, experts on child welfare litigation say that Texas has more fiercely fought the foster-care class action case than any of the more than 30 other states and counties that have faced similar suits since the early 1980s.

Texas is one of only four states to go to trial in the foster-care suits and has dug in its heels. Republican leaders elsewhere, such as Gov. Nikki Haley in South Carolina, have settled with plaintiffs and made compromises, some child advocates have noted.

Jack’s findings, and recent recommendations by her special masters Kevin Ryan of New Jersey and Francis McGovern of North Carolina, point to big, potential financial exposure for the department — and thus, the Legislature.

She very well could effectively order the state to spend tens of millions a year on new initiatives. Lowering CPS conservatorship workers’ caseloads could require hiring hundreds more of them. Jack could also require higher payments for vendors to provide better care of foster children, closer to their home communities and the hiring of more inspectors to police the vendors.

But state GOP leaders are fighting Jack, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, to the finish.

Paxton appears all but certain to appeal her final order, which could come in a few months. That probably would push any need for the state to comply with Jack’s expected demands well past next year’s legislative session.

Legal defense costs for the state will mount, unless the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is often deferential to states’ rights, rides to Texas’ rescue. But on two occasions earlier this year, the 5th Circuit declined the state’s requests that it roll back Jack’s actions.

Wittman, the Abbott spokesman, reflected the state’s frustration in responding to questions about the state’s legal defense costs.

“There’s no question this money would be better spent protecting children, which is why it’s unfortunate the plaintiffs' attorneys are prioritizing their fees over the well-being of Texas children, perpetuating conflict through never-ending judicial management of CPS,” he said in a written statement.

Yetter, a commercial litigator who has served for free in the case, called that inaccurate and unfair.

“This case is not to make a profit,” he said, explaining that the Texas plaintiffs’ lawyers — his firm Yetter Coleman LLP of Houston and Dallas law firm Haynes & Boone — served pro bono.

In civil rights cases such as the foster-care case, if plaintiffs win, they can seek certain attorney fees, Yetter noted.

New York-based Children’s Rights, which launched the challenge to Texas foster care, “always has used any fees that it recovers in these public-interest cases to fund other child welfare litigation and pursue its mission,” he said.

By the numbers

Texas agencies have spent more than $7 million fighting a class-action suit over foster care in the past 5½ years. Only about $62,000 of it was on travel and $60,000 on court fees and transcription services. The great bulk of the expense was for the time of lawyers and other state staff members. Here’s a breakout by agency:

$3,664,059 — Department of Family and Protective Services

$1,310,045 — Health and Human Services Commission

$1,610,485 — Office of Attorney General

$6,584,589 — Subtotal

The protective services agency also has paid invoices from court-appointed special masters:

$594,987 — Public Catalyst Group Corp. (former New Jersey official Kevin Ryan)

$55,152 — Francis E. McGovern (Duke law professor)

$650,139 — Subtotal

$7,234,728— Total

SOURCES: Texas Department of Family and Protective Services; Texas Health and Human Services Commission; Office of Attorney General; Dallas Morning News research.