Child Welfare
Texas is the latest state to face a class-action lawsuit from nonprofit litigator Children’s Rights, reports Terri Langford of the Houston Chronicle. The suit was filed on behalf of 12,000 children housed in long-term residential and foster care.
Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman threw the brakes on the privatization process with the state’s child welfare agency, reports Martha Stoddard of the Omaha World-Herald, and then the state legislature reinforced him with a law that forces a moratorium on new private contracts.
Chandra Thomas of the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange reports on a sex trafficking bill passed unanimously by the Georgia Senate, which would get tougher on traffickers and kinder with juveniles being prostituted.
Education/Jobs
Legislators in Maryland, New York and other states are trying to move local versions of the DREAM Act, which failed at the federal level and would have put illegal immigrant youth on a path to citizenship based on academic achievement. Stories linked here are from David Hill of the Washington Times and Fox News Latino.
Another for-profit school is in hot water, reports Kevin Koeninger of Courthouse News Service. Two former students of Kentucky’s Beckfield College allege that the school concealed the fact that local law schools would not accept credits accumulated at Beckfield.
Juvenile Justice
The Colorado bill that would have re-sentenced the 48 inmates who were given life without parole for crimes committed as a juvenile is dead, reports Patrick Malone of The Pueblo Chieftain. Oddly, the bill was killed by a no-vote from a legislator who supports the idea but believes the law was not going to survive a constitutional challenge.
Miscellaneous
Shirley Sagawa, the first chief operating officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service under Bill Clinton, urged AmeriCorps alums in a Huffington Post op-ed to get vocal and visual in the effort to fend of a zeroing out of the federal program this year.
