A federal judge has granted class-action status to a lawsuit regarding alleged overuse of psychotropic medication by Missouri’s child welfare agency.

Writing in a joint op-ed, Christina Wilson Remlin and Currey Cook (Lambda Legal) denounce the Aderholt amendment, which “authorizes discrimination against adults and children, permitting government-funded conversion therapy for LGBTQ youth and denial of lifesaving health care.”

A lawsuit charging Missouri officials have failed to properly oversee the administration of psychotropic medications to children in foster care was certified Thursday as a class action. Samantha Bartosz is quoted.

In a ruling hailed as “historic,” a federal judge sided with the city of Philadelphia and same-sex foster and adoptive parents. Christina Wilson Remlin is quoted speaking out against policies that exclude LGBTQ people or others simply because they do not pass a religious or moral litmus test.

Christina Wilson Remlin is quoted in this article about a harmful new proposal to legalize discrimination against prospective LGBTQ foster and adoptive parents: “In a context where placement problems are pervasive across the nation, the last thing we need is to discriminate against a very viable and important source for loving homes for kids.”

“In a foster-care system, for example, where we see rows of cribs where kids weren’t being soothed and weren’t being touched, eventually those kids stopped caring because no one was responding to them,” Sandy Santana, executive director of Children’s Rights, an organization that works with kids in the foster-care system, tells Romper.

“This type of separation is especially dangerous for infants because in the first three years of life, the brain is going to rapid neurological development,” says Sandy Santana, executive director of Children’s Rights, a non-profit advocating for kids in the foster-care system.

Sandy Santana is quoted: “There is absolutely no plan to reunite these families … These two bureaucracies aren’t always communicating with each other, so it’s not always clear if the children are being tracked.”

Sandy Santana is quoted: “We’ve heard stories of parents being deported and their children being left behind. And then kids are being sent all over the country, and that distance makes it less likely that these reunifications are going to take place quickly.”

Sandy Santana is quoted in this article about Trump’s executive order to stop family separation, which does little for families who have already been split apart. “There is absolutely no plan to reunite these families,” said Sandy Santana, executive director of Children’s Rights.