Joseph A. Ex Rel. Wolfe v. Ingram

EBEL, Circuit Judge.

This civil rights class action reaches this court for the second time after more than twenty years of litigation and seventeen years of federal court oversight of New Mexico’s Department of Human Services and its successor, the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department (collectively “the Department”). Appellants brought suit in 1980 alleging that a variety of systemic problems within the Department led to failures to make timely decisions which effectively denied them meaningful access to adoption services and a chance to be raised in permanent, stable families.

Thr…