NASHVILLE (LN) — A federal judge on Thursday denied an emergency bid to force Tennessee's child welfare agency to stop placing foster children in temporary housing that allegedly fails to meet their basic human needs, ruling that the 19 named plaintiffs could not show they personally faced imminent risk of such a placement.

U.S. District Judge Aleta A. Trauger, of the Middle District of Tennessee, acknowledged that the plaintiffs had presented ample evidence that putative class members' constitutional rights had been violated by the Tennessee Department of Children's Services' past housing practices. But she held that the gap between documented past harm and the specific, immediate threat required for injunctive relief was fatal to the motion.

The plaintiffs — foster children suing through next friends — sought to enjoin DCS Commissioner Margie Quin, Deputy Commissioner of Child Safety Carla Aaron, and Deputy Commissioner of Child Programs Karen Jointer Byrant from operating or keeping the putative class in temporary housing that fails to meet their basic human needs.

Trauger rejected the argument that any foster child in DCS custody is always at imminent risk of a harmful temporary placement. To reach that conclusion, she held, the court would have to accept a chain of contingencies the defendants laid out in their opposition: that a named plaintiff's current placement disrupts, that DCS cannot find a long-term replacement, that no licensed facility is available, that the child enters transitional housing, and that the transitional housing is one of the locations plaintiffs contend is constitutionally deficient.

All those conditional steps foreclosed the certainty the law demands. Applying the Sixth Circuit's standard from D.T. v. Sumner County Schools — that an injury must be both certain and immediate, not speculative or theoretical — Trauger held that the chain of contingencies the defendants identified ruled out the showing of imminent harm required for a preliminary injunction.

The ruling also turned on a standing principle that cuts against class-action plaintiffs at the injunction stage: the risk of future harm to putative class members who are not named parties does not factor into the analysis. Each named plaintiff must show personal, imminent injury — not that unnamed members of the proposed class have suffered or may suffer harm.

Trauger denied the motion without prejudice, leaving the door open for the plaintiffs to return if their circumstances change and they can establish the requisite risk of harm. The underlying constitutional claims over DCS housing conditions remain pending.

The court announced its denial of an April 17 oral argument hearing; Thursday's written opinion provided the full reasoning.

The case is docketed as No. 3:25-cv-00566 in the Nashville Division of the Middle District of Tennessee.