Two years ago, Temecia and Rodney Jackson’s newborn baby, Mila, was taken from them for three weeks in a nightmare scenario that gained national media attention.

At the time, the Jackson family’s pediatrician reported the parents to child protective services in Texas, questioning their ability to properly care for Mila’s serious jaundice level using their midwife instead of going to a hospital. Mila was taken and put into foster care for three weeks before being returned to her parents. 

Now, the Jackson family, alongside the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas, announced on Tuesday that they have sued the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), challenging several policies that they argue undermine due process rights and violate state and constitutional law.

“At no point in my life and my motherhood did I ever think that this could have happened,” Temecia told The 19th on Tuesday. “It’s never going to fully be over for us. She was taken from us for pretty much her first month of life. But we are definitely looking forward to at least holding DFPS accountable in some way.”

The legal complaint focuses on how the Jacksons were treated after Mila was returned from foster care. DFPS investigated the family without a proper hearing, the lawsuit says, and then issued a formal designation stating that it had “reason to believe” that Mila’s parents engaged in medical neglect based on the evidence. 

This is the most serious of the five labels that DFPS issues after a child abuse or neglect investigation. That “reason to believe” designation resulted in Temecia and Rodney Jackson being placed in the state’s central registry of information about people accused of abuse or neglect. 

Temecia said being included on the abuse registry felt like an embarrassment, and she worried about the future of their community involvement.Rodney frequently coaches their two older sons’ sports teams and Temecia volunteers at the sons’ school — something she paused when their names were on the registry, she said.

“They have to do background checks, and so when it was time to redo our annual check for me to be a volunteer at their school, I feared them pulling that record up and it saying that I had this designation from CPS,” she said.

The Jacksons appealed DFPS’ decision, and the agency in March 2024 reduced the case to “unable to determine” whether child abuse or neglect occurred, according to Charelle Lett, a legal fellow and attorney at ACLU Texas.

The “unable to determine” classification may appear less serious because it allowed the parents’ names to be taken off the abuse registry; however, Lett told The 19th that this tier has no appeal process, and DFPS would maintain a record of the case with this designation. While “reason to believe” can be appealed to have the neglect allegations dismissed or “ruled out,” the “unable to determine” level cannot be dismissed. That lingering record questioning whether the parents engaged in abuse could be used against them by DFPS to potentially remove one of the Jacksons’ children again, Lett said.

“‘Unable to determine’ wouldn’t show up in a background check, but let’s say there was a situation where, hypothetically, one of the kids went to school one day with a bruise and the school wanted to investigate it. The school would be able to get access to these records, and DFPS uses that record as a factor in determining whether or not a child should be moved from the home,” Lett said.

Temecia said her family should have never been on the abuse registry at all. The “unable to determine” abuse label still paints a narrative suggesting they have done something wrong, she said.

The family’s lawsuit is challenging two DFPS policies: one that allows for the agency to give someone an abuse or neglect designation and put them on the central registry without a proper hearing, and another DFPS rule that restricts the ability to appeal classifications listed as “unable to determine.”

Temecia said after the dust settled a bit following Mila’s return, she and Rodney wanted to find a way to support others in the state so that “no other family has to go through their child being taken from them unjustly without due process.”

The national attention on the Jacksons’ case two years ago put a spotlight on two systemic realities in the United States: the policing of Black families by child welfare systems and the disregard of midwifery expertise by many doctors.

Federal law requires that certain groups of professionals like physicians, teachers and social workers to report suspected child neglect or abuse. The Jackson family’s physician made the report to CPS expressing concern that Mila had a bilirubin level of 21.7, which if left untreated could lead to brain damage. The Jackson family says that the doctor knew about their plans to treat the jaundice under the care of a licensed midwife and that he provided instructions for how to treat Mila if they did not go to the hospital. 

Ultimately, DFPS moved forward with filing a petition for the child’s removal from her home, but the petition included  the wrong parents’ names.

Experts previously told The 19th that accusations of danger and neglect disproportionately affect families of color and can be influenced by bias.

A 2021 study from researchers at Rutgers University and Duke University found that Black children in the country’s 20 most-populous counties saw consistently more contact with child protective services. In Texas’ largest counties, the Dallas Morning News reported based on this data that about half of all Black children are investigated by CPS by the age of 18.

In the Jackson family’s case, their ordeal has left many scars. 

The attachment that Temecia and Mila have developed over the last two years has been “heightened,” Temecia said. Letting Mila out of her sight or allowing others to care for her has been a challenge, she added. The Jackson family also moved out of their Dallas-area home because they didn’t feel safe.

“That was our first home. We purchased the home together. It was a new construction home. That’s where we had intended to be for as far as we could see. But once everything happened, it just no longer felt like home,” Temecia said.

For now, they are still picking up the pieces of their life and taking things one day at a time.

“I would not wish this on any mother,” she said. “And so we are absolutely hoping that with this lawsuit that DFPS will make changes so that mothers, husbands, fathers, families behind us will not have to deal with this.”