Federal judge sets hearing to determine fate of Mississippi Olivia Y. foster care lawsuit

Lawyers for Mississippi’s foster care system and attorneys representing the children who’ve lived inside it will each have 40 minutes to argue early next year if  the state’s child welfare system still needs continued federal safety oversight. 

The hearing, scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Jan. 25 in Jackson, signals the next iteration of the Olivia Y. v. Barbour federal lawsuit — a decades-old case in which lawyers alleged that Mississippi children, like then-three-year-old Olivia Y., were unconstitutionally endangered in the state’s foster care system. 

In 2008, attorneys for both sides agreed to court-mandated monitoring of Mississippi’s child welfare system. Monitoring requirements have changed since then, but versions of the oversight have remained. Reports from the monitors have consistently found dangerous conditions in the system. 

In May, lawyers for Gov. Tate Reeves and Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services Commissioner Andrea Sanders filed a motion to end this court oversight. They wrote that the state had taken the necessary steps to guarantee foster children’s rights to reasonably safe living arrangements “now and in the future.”

That statement was scrutinized in July, when the court monitoring group Public Catalyst published its 2025 report of conditions within Mississippi’s child welfare agency. The group found that the department had met just 22 of 107 applicable safety measures. Failed measures included the rate of foster child abuse within the system and social workers placing children in unlicensed homes, like hotel rooms.

Sanders and Marcia Lowry, the lead plaintiff lawyer representing Mississippi foster children, have each publicly defended their positions since. Sanders, at an October legislative budget hearing, said meeting all the measurements of the federal monitoring is unrealistic. Lowry told Mississippi Today in September that lawyers for the state Child Protection Services Department had already agreed to meet them.

Now, each party will make their case in early 2027 to U.S. Chief District Judge Halil S. Ozerden, who’s overseen the lawsuit since 2020.