Jim Justice, Governor of West Virginia, et al. v. Jonathan R., Minor, By Next Friend Sarah Dixon, et al.

West Virginia courts continuously oversee the placement and well-being of the State’s foster children. These courts are the key decision-makers when it comes to foster children’s treatment and care, following strict criteria written into state law. So when suit was brought against West Virginia state officials and a state agency for purportedly mishandling that treatment and care, the suit necessarily implicated related state-court proceedings. The district court recognized as much and thus abstained. In contrast, the Fourth Circuit concluded that the suit must remain in federal court. It believed that a state foster-care proceeding is not the sort of case that can ever trigger abstention and that the plaintiffs might struggle to obtain class-wide relief in state court. Now, the plaintiffs can pursue systemic relief in federal court that could both fundamentally upset the ways West Virginia courts administer the State’s child welfare laws and indefinitely require the federal court to superintend the State’s entire child welfare system. The questions presented are:

1. Must federal courts abstain from interfering with state-court child welfare proceedings under Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971)?

2. May federal courts refuse to abstain because plaintiffs seek class-wide relief?