Florida defied public records law on child’s death. Taxpayers’ tab: $376,000

Child welfare authorities’ refusal, for well over a year, to hand over documents detailing the state’s failed efforts to protect a Miami toddler will cost Florida taxpayers $376,665 — money that otherwise could have been spent on services for at-risk children.

It is one of several public records battles that have played out during the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Barbara Areces, who earlier this year censured the Department of Children & Families for defying the state’s open government laws, awarded attorneys for the Miami Herald and other news organizations the money in an order that closes out a nearly two-year litigation.

In her five-page order, Areces said the legal fees generated by the news outlets seeking to enforce the state’s public records law were “appropriate and reasonable.”

The dispute concerned Rashid Bryant, a 22-month-old boy who died on Nov. 6, 2020, from complications of acute and chronic blunt force injuries. Rashid’s death, the Medical Examiner’s Office wrote, was partly the result of “parental neglect.”

Rashid and his nine siblings had been the subject of about 25 reports to Florida’s child abuse hotline, and the children had been in and out of foster care. The boy’s family had been facing eviction at the time his mother called 911 to report he was in distress; in fact, Rashid had already perished.

Under Florida’s public records law — originally approved by voters in 1909, but later enshrined in the state Constitution following a voter referendum — all documents detailing Rashid’s involvement with the state’s child welfare system should have been open to public inspection upon a finding that his death resulted from abuse or neglect.

But DCF insisted for more than a year that the agency was still investigating the cause of his death, and, therefore, agency records were exempt from public disclosure.

Areces, who presided over the lawsuit filed by the Herald and a coalition of other news outlets and open government advocates, ruled DCF was being deliberately disingenuous, and that agency administrators concluded within weeks of Rashid’s death that his parents were responsible. Both were criminally charged.

“Open records victories like this are both rare and significant,” said Monica Richardson, executive editor of the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald.

“This moment is a reflection of the unwavering commitment by the Miami Herald to tell, and fight for, the stories that lead to change in the public’s interest. In this case, we are doing the public good by holding accountable an agency charged with protecting the most vulnerable among us — our children,” she said.

Added Mark Caramanica, a Tampa attorney who litigated the controversy along with other lawyers at the firm Thomas & LoCicero: “It’s regrettable that this lawsuit had to be filed in the first place. When a child under DCF supervision dies from abuse, the public records law is clear that we have the right to know how DCF performed its job, and whether additional steps could have been taken to prevent that death.

“And when DCF refuses to comply with those disclosure obligations it’s the taxpayers who wind up footing the bill,” Caramanica said.

DCF administrators did not respond to a request for comment from the Herald.

In court pleadings, agency lawyers insisted DCF should not be forced to pay the media organizations’ legal fees, as Florida law allows, because administrators did not deliberately break the law when they refused to release agency records detailing how investigators, caseworkers and supervisors oversaw Rashid’s family.

“Throughout these proceedings, the department has acted in good faith when trying to interpret” state laws governing the release of agency records, lawyers John M. Jackson and Andrew J. McGinley — the latter DCF’s general counsel — wrote in an August 2022 court pleading.

“Adding to this burden,” the two lawyers wrote, “is the department’s very clear duty to protect the privacy rights of the children and adults involved in abuse and neglect investigations. It is the department that must balance a clear requirement for confidentiality against an unclear statute that authorizes release of confidential records in certain circumstances.”

The lawyers added: “The department should not be ordered to pay fees or costs to [journalists] when its actions were at all times good faith attempts to comply with various provisions” of state child welfare law.

In fact, Areces said at the conclusion of a March hearing over the lawsuit, DCF administrators knew the records should be made public shortly after Rashid’s death — but kept them secret anyway. Areces remarked that DCF’s file on Rashid contained “a lot of information that is horrifying.”

“The records should have been released a long time ago,” Areces said following the nearly four-hour hearing.

Rashid’s parents, who lived in Opa-locka, had been well-known to child welfare authorities long before Rashid’s birth on Dec. 13, 2018 — generating more than a dozen abuse or neglect reports to DCF’s hotline. In the months just prior to the boy’s birth, reports alleged his mother smoked marijuana with Rashid’s older siblings, that most of her children weren’t attending school, that her home lacked running water and that the children were going hungry.

The state removed the children a month before Rashid’s birth, but then returned the youngsters to mother Jabora Deris and father Christopher Bryant. In the spring of 2020, Rashid appears to have broken his leg — Deris declined to have the bone X-rayed at the time, though the fracture was clearly visible in a post-mortem scan. Records show he remained mostly bedridden until his death, unable to walk.

Family members later described an apparent head injury that also was documented in an autopsy report, released in June 2021, showing the toddler had suffered four skull fractures and a brain bleed. The autopsy concluded Rashid’s death was a homicide.

The Herald was joined in the litigation by its parent the McClatchy Co., Times Publishing Co., New York Times Co., Scripps Media, Gannett Co., the Graham Media Group, doing business as WKMG-TV6, WPLG, Graham Media Group, doing business as WJXT-TV4, SCC Communications, the Associated Press, Florida Star Newspapers, the Florida Press Association and the First Amendment Foundation.

Deris and Bryant are awaiting trial on charges of manslaughter and aggravated child abuse.

The DeSantis administration has been accused by news organizations and open-government groups of ignoring, denying or slow-walking valid public records requests, including those related to the secret airlifting of Texas migrants to northern cities using millions in taxpayer dollars. That operation is currently under criminal investigation in San Antonio, Texas.

Documents produced so far in the migrant case show top aides to the governor using the encrypted app Signal to communicate on matters subject to public scrutiny.

Earlier this week, the public records watchdog Florida Center for Government Accountability asked a judge to hold the administration in contempt for failing to fully respond to its requests for records on the migrant flights. Like the Herald and its partners, the watchdog organization sued over the lack of disclosure.