PHOENIX – An Arizona Supreme Court decision upholding the firings of five social workers who said they were fired as scapegoats put an end to a 2013 scandal that enveloped the state’s former Child Protective Services agency.
The high court in a brief order Monday upheld a Court of Appeals decision that said the five women were at-will employees not protected by state civil service law.
“I’m deeply disappointed with these very nice ladies, but not surprised and not prepared to be critical of the Supreme Court,” their attorney, Terry Woods, said Tuesday. “I thought the Court of Appeals ruling wasn’t so good, but I understand the Supreme Court operates differently.”
Fired for Literally Thousands of Failures
The five senior agency workers were fired months after the November 2013 discovery that thousands of child abuse hotline calls were labeled as not worthy of being investigated. The agency was then shuttered and a new Department of Child Safety was created.
The workers’ lawsuit said they were top employees chosen to help review inactive cases under a plan devised by their superiors to try to cut down on a crushing caseload for field workers.
They said they were only following orders to go through thousands of cases and chose those to be investigated and those that could be closed. A deputy director of Child Protective Services’ parent agency also was fired for approving their plan and did not sue.
The five women — Deborah Harper, Tracey Everitt, Michelle Parker, Jana Leineweber and Janet Sabol — claimed they were turned into scapegoats. They sought unspecified monetary damages. However, the deputy director did not sue.
Key Dates
2008: The Legislature broadens the definition of when CPS can remove a child for neglect.
2009: The Legislature slashes the division’s funding, leading to hundreds of layoffs at CPS.
2012: A record number of children are in foster care and case backlogs are still rising.
November 2013: 6,000 reports of child abuse and neglect are found labeled not investigated. A growing backlog of other cases discovered.
May 2014: Legislature approves and Brewer signs a law creating the Department of Child Safety, with Charles Flanagan as director. Some funding is restored.
February 2015: New Gov. Doug Ducey fires Flanagan and replaces him with Greg McKay.
February 2016: The number of children in foster care peaks at more than 19,000.
Sept. 30, 2016: As the fiscal year ends, DCS has removed just eight children more than in fiscal 2015.
Arizona Statewide Scandal
Their work became the subject of a statewide scandal in November 2013. The head of the criminal investigations unit, Greg McKay, followed up on a hotline report case that was never investigated. Consequently, he discovered thousands more.
About 6,000 cases of child abuse or neglect were reported to the hotline in the four years before the discovery. However, they were never investigated. It took more than a year for a new team to review all those cases. They found that more than 400 children were removed from their homes after follow-up reports or investigations.
A team led made up of the five fired workers agency improperly designated the cases “N.I.” — meaning “Not Investigated”. This was done to help manage the heavy workload and focus on the most severe cases. Under state law, all reports generated via the hotline must be investigated.
The scandal led to the agency’s demise and the creation of the Department of Child Safety, now led by McKay.
The ex-Child Protective Services employees argued their terminations were the result of a scheme to provide political cover to then-Gov. Jan Brewer and Clarence Carter, who headed the Department of Economic Security.
The Fired CPS Workers’ Claims
The workers argued they were illegally fired for political reasons and not because they failed at their jobs. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Robert Oberbillig dismissed the case, saying state law allowed the firings even if they were scapegoats for others’ actions.
Woods pointed to Arizona’s employment laws, which limit fired workers’ ability to seek help from the courts.
Many state employees lost civil service protections after Gov. Jan Brewer championed an overhaul of the state merit system protections through the Legislature in 2012. Between 2015 and December, about 500 workers at the state’s largest agency, the Department of Economic Security, were fired.
Changes would be needed at the Legislature to stop alleged abuses Woods said led to his clients’ firings. Begin a social worker is “a thankless job because all you deal with is broken this and broken that,” he said. “These were cream of the crop ladies. I’m just disappointed we couldn’t help them.”
The following article titled “Firings of Arizona CPS Workers Will Stand” was written and published for AZCentral and USA Today on May 16th, 2017. Its length and content have been edited to share on Saving Grace Advocates‘ blog.