Constitutional Nonsense

We live in the age of judicial discovery, of New Constitutional Rights. Recently the New York Civil Liberties Union thought up another new right: the Constitutionally Guaranteed Right to be Adopted— whereupon it filed suit against New York City, New York State, and three child-care agencies. Bringing suit is easy. Defending can cost a fortune— in this case, about a quarter of a million dollars.

As a method of attack the CLU tried to press a class action, claiming that they, or rather the five individual black children in whose names they brought suit, represented all those black children in New York City’s authorized child-care agencies whose legal relationship with their natural parents had been or could be terminated (ending that relationship is a prerequisite for being put up for adoption). They claimed that, although adoptive homes could be found for the more than five thousand members of the class, the child-care agencies deliberately kept them in foster care for their entire childhoods, in order to collect the percapita government subsidies.

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Daniel Oliver

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We live in the age of judicial discovery, of New Constitutional Rights. Recently the New York Civil Liberties Union thought up another new right: the Constitutionally Guaranteed Right to be Adopted— whereupon it filed suit against New York City, New York State, and three child-care agencies. Bringing suit is easy. Defending can cost a fortune— in this case, about a quarter of a million dollars.

As a method of attack the CLU tried to press a class action, claiming that they, or rather the five individual black children in whose names they brought suit, represented all those black children in New York City’s authorized child-care agencies whose legal relationship with their natural parents had been or could be terminated (ending that relationship is a prerequisite for being put up for adoption). They claimed that, although adoptive homes could be found for the more than five thousand members of the class, the child-care agencies deliberately kept them in foster care for their entire childhoods, in order to collect the percapita government subsidies.