Massachusetts Child Maltreatment Registry Violates Due Process

Many states, including Georgia, allow the state child protection agency to place people on a child maltreatment registry with no opportunity for court review. Georgia, for example, only allows internal appeals within the agency to successive layers of supervisors or other designees within the agency.  

Massachusetts tried to implement such as system in 2015. Until then, the agency designated all referrals as either "supported" or "unsupported." In cases found to be supported, the named perpetrator could appeal to a quasi-judicial hearing by a neutral party. In 2020, those neutral parties overturned almost half of the "supported" designations that they heard.

In 2015, Massachusetts Department of Family and Children's Services created a middle designation of "substantiated concern." The agency used the designation for cases that it believed gave reason for concern, but posed no immediate threat to the child.  Although the people named weren't officially listed in the state registry, DCF keep the records open to use in other determinations, such as background checks for foster parents. Because DCF didn't officially list the alleged perpetrators, it provided only an internal review, not the appeal to a neutral fact-finder required for "supported" findings.

At the end of May, a Massachusetts state judge found that the internal-only review is unconstitutional. Because the state's designation interfered with liberty interests, its failure to provide for neutral review on appeal violated due process rights.

This trial court ruling follows a trend in other states, with the bulk of decisions requiring some sort of meaningful appeal to neutral decision makers. It will be interesting to see which states change their procedures ahead of the trend and which continue to lag behind.