Chicago Lawyers’ Committee Files Federal Suit Charging Advocate Christ Medical Center with Racial Discrimination
Chicago, April 20, 2022: Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and pro bono counsel Burke, Warren, MacKay, & Serritella P.C. have filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of Illinois against Advocate Health and Hospitals Corporation and two of its affiliated doctors today, alleging that they discriminated against Plaintiff Jillian Robinson on the basis of her race, and violated her constitutional rights during the course of her son J.R.’s unnecessary hospitalization.
Robinson took 10-month-old J.R. to the emergency room at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn (ACMC) in April of last year, concerned about a mark that had developed on his outer ear. From the moment she stepped into the ER, Robinson, who is Black, became entangled in a parent’s nightmare: ACMC’s doctors, nurses, and social workers—without any objective indication that J.R. had been hurt or was in pain—are alleged to have jumped to the conclusion that she must have harmed him. They called the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and launched an investigation of alleged child abuse.
“It was a parade of questions, maybe half a dozen people at a time,” said Robinson. “It felt like an interrogation after a while. I just answered their questions, as I had nothing to hide. But when I realized they wanted to take my son, it was like being punched in the throat. I understood where it was coming from because I had experienced micro aggressions as soon as I stepped foot in the hospital. I was more than aware of how I was being perceived.”
ACMC is alleged to have subjected J.R. to numerous medically unnecessary and invasive examinations, which revealed no evidence of abuse or neglect, but ultimately indicated a benign “deep hemangioma”—a birthmark. Despite this fact, the DCFS caseworker accepted the false narrative of child abuse set in motion and advanced by ACMC and its doctors. DCFS then required Robinson to either place J.R. in temporary foster care or comply with a “safety plan” that required her and J.R. to move out of their home and live under the constant supervision of a family member vetted by DCFS.
“Ms. Robinson’s experience at Advocate Christ Medical Center and with the child welfare system were totally unwarranted and traumatizing for her and J.R,” says Beatriz Diaz-Pollack, Senior Counsel with Chicago Lawyers’ Committee. “When the medical and child welfare systems pursue unwarranted investigations of abuse based only on faulty, racialized assumptions made by physicians who are not following established standards of care, it can cause both immediate and long-term harm to children and their parents.” She adds that, even now after the child welfare investigation was correctly determined to be unfounded and closed, medical, child welfare and police records exist memorializing this false allegation of abuse by Robinson.
According to Chicago Lawyers’ Committee, Robinson’s experience reflects broader and pervasive systemic patterns of discrimination. Academic studies have shown that hospital-initiated child welfare reports disproportionately involve Black and Brown families. Studies further indicate that while Black people make up less than 15% of the population in Illinois, they nonetheless are the subject of more than one-third of DCFS investigations conducted state-wide. And in Cook County, where Robinson lives, review of U.S. Census Data together with DCFS statistics show that Black children are placed in foster care at a rate three times their presence in the general population.
Implicit bias by healthcare providers and institutional racism in our health care system play a significant and disproportionate role in this disparity. To address these broader systemic issues, Chicago Lawyers’ Committee, in partnership with Legal Aid Chicago, has also filed a Complaint on Robinson’s behalf against ACMC and DCFS with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights alleging violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Diaz-Pollack says, “This lawsuit lets the Advocate Christ Medical Center and its medical providers know that they cannot engage in practices that perpetuate systemic racism against Black families without legal repercussions.”
The lawsuit seeks accountability from ACMC and financial damages for the harm suffered by Robinson and her son and to induce changes to ACMC’s policies and practices in order to prevent racially biased medical treatment and reporting to DCFS and other government authorities in the future.
Read the Complaint here
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About Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights – Chicago Lawyers’ Committee is a group of civil rights lawyers and advocates working to secure racial equity and economic opportunity for all since 1969. We provide legal representation through partnerships with the private bar, and we collaborate with grassroots organizations and other advocacy groups to implement community-based solutions that advance civil rights