Good morning. It’s Monday. We’ll look at the case of a Bronx woman who — legally — smoked marijuana before giving birth, but had her baby removed by the city’s child welfare service while she was still in the hospital.
Nor did Rivers spend the first few days postpartum with the baby, a critical bonding time. She says she was allowed to visit the child daily, but only briefly.
The agency told Rivers, 34, that it was opening a neglect case and was moving to place the child in foster care.
This was August 2021. Marijuana had been legal in New York for months. Rivers is now suing the agency.
My colleague Andy Newman, who works on social services and poverty in New York City, writes that the case reflects continued uncertainty among authorities about how marijuana should be handled now that it has been legalized. But the Rivers case raises other questions that became apparent when I asked him to explain what Rivers and the agency said happened.
According to the lawsuit, the agency went after Rivers “not because ACS was trying to protect TW” — her baby’s initials — but “because Ms. Rivers is black.” Is there a pattern of discrimination against black families by the agency?
ACS’s own employees have said an audit was done in 2020 that seemed to confirm what families and lawyers have been saying for decades.
The audit — which ACS did not disclose until forced to do so under the Freedom of Information Act — questioned more than 50 black and Hispanic frontline workers and agency managers, along with many parents and lawyers. It described a “predatory system that specifically targets black and brown parents” and subjects them to “another level of scrutiny” that is extremely disruptive to families’ lives.
Black families in New York City are seven times as likely as white families to be charged with child abuse and 13 times as likely to have their children removed.
While there are many possible explanations for this, and while ACS has taken steps to reduce racial disproportion over the years, the audit concluded that in the agency’s view “race works as a risk indicator” – even though most ACS employees do. Black, as are most of the chiefs of the agency’s Child Protection Department. (The audit was based on conversations with people who chose to participate, rather than a quantitative study.)
Rivers said she and her baby were drug tested without her consent. Isn’t that unusual? And why did the doctors and nurses suspect she had used marijuana? Had she smoked weed in her room at the hospital?
She said she was asked by a doctor or nurse during the delivery if she had taken any drugs or alcohol and she replied that she had smoked weed several hours earlier. It’s not clear why she was asked or if that was standard practice at that hospital, BronxCare Health System, which didn’t answer my questions.
While many hospitals routinely screen maternity patients orally for drug use, a study of nearly 40,000 births in Pennsylvania published last month found that black mothers were more likely to be drug tested than white mothers, even though white mothers were more likely to test positive.
The hospital said Rivers smoked weed in her room; she denies it.
ACS required her to attend parenting and anger management classes and take drug tests for three months after giving birth. Did ACS say the baby was harmed by the marijuana exposure?
According to her lawsuit, ACS never claimed that TW was harmed. This is potentially significant, because the ACS Marijuana Policy states that a positive marijuana test in an infant is not in itself grounds for removal – there must be a separate finding that the marijuana caused “impairment or risk of impairment”. The suit also says the hospital did not treat the baby for anything related to the marijuana exposure.
Was her baby taken away because she had a previous child support case? What does the temp agency say?
It’s not clear. In Rivers’ earlier case, seven years ago, she lost custody of her two older children due to drug and alcohol use and her oldest son’s failure to receive medical care. But the suit notes that ACS had already given her permission to have those older children back by the time TW was born in August 2021.
The lawsuit also says that both family court judges presiding over the TW case said the earlier case posed no immediate risk to TW.
It may be that ACS disagreed. The judge who ordered TW returned to Rivers when he was six days old, according to the ACS indictment.
For their part, ACP officials would not answer questions about the matter, citing confidentiality laws. They said that as a general policy they do not remove children solely based on a parent’s use of marijuana and that when investigating cases related to “parental drug/alcohol abuse,” they “assess the impact that abuse has or threaten to have on the child’. safety.”
But the anger management classes and the drug tests weren’t all Rivers had to deal with.
Rivers said the frequent surprise visits from ACS employees were more than just an annoyance. At the time of TW’s birth, she was working from her apartment to do her. Sometimes a random house call from ACS would come while she was with a client.
Some customers were sympathetic. “A few of my friends are going through the same thing I am, so they understand,” Rivers said.
Others were put off.
“Sometimes when ACS showed up, I would just cancel my hair appointments and refund them,” she said. “That just interferes with my personal life, as I work and try to make a living.”
Weather
Enjoy a mostly sunny day with an elevation of nearly 72 and light winds. Expect cloud cover and a low around 56 with light winds overnight.
ALTERNATIVE SIDE PARKING
Effective until Friday (Shavuot).
Migrants
Fictions about migrant crises: The story immediately became a sensational talking point: homeless veterans were evicted from their temporary hotel rooms north of New York City so that people coming from the Mexican border could stay there. The problem was that the story was a sham.
The mayor and the presidentMayor Eric Adams has blamed President Biden for an influx of migrants, reinforcing the concerns of many Democrats but angering Biden’s aides, who don’t want him publicly criticized lest it be Donald Trump or one of his Republican allies to help.
More local news
METROPOLITAN Diary
Her friend
Dear Diary:
My friend Sonja was born and raised in Minnesota. She moved to the West Village in 1965. Her first studio apartment is still her home. She loved everything about Manhattan: the ballet, the opera, the museums, the people, the theater, The New Yorker.
Sonja is a retired teacher who spent many years commuting to a small town in central New Jersey. She was known for her classroom decor. The ceiling was criss-crossed with string, from which hung New Yorker covers of about 50 years.
These were the sources of inspiration for her students’ creative writing assignments. Charles Addams appreciated the stories Sonja sent him, with his covers as the subject. He wrote a personal note to her, mentioning his favorite.
Blossom Dearie was a neighbor late in life. I know this because Sonja visited her a day before she went to lunch with me.
Sonja has a hard time making ends meet these days. Bad knees, she says. She tells me about the angels who live in her apartment. They watch her.
Sonja will soon be moving back to Minnesota to be close to her family. If I could, I’d make the Empire State Building glow red (her favorite color) on the eve of her departure.
