Georgia mother whose children were taken for 55 days after Tennessee traffic stop sues DCS
A Georgia mother whose five children were removed by the Department of Children's Services for 55 days after a February 2023 traffic stop in Coffee County is suing several of the department's employees and state and local law enforcement officers she says unlawfully seized her children.
The lawsuit claims that officers conducted an emergency court hearing in secret so that they could remove her children after officers found a small amount of marijuana in her car.
"The children are still suffering the effects of the family’s prolonged separation – and may never fully recover," the lawsuit says.
On Feb. 17, 2023, Bianca Clayborne, Deonte Williams and their five children were driving from their home in Georgia to a funeral in Chicago when they were stopped shortly after 9:30 a.m. by the Tennessee Highway Patrol in Coffee County, Tennessee, for an alleged "slow poke" violation and possible window tint violation, the lawsuit says.
Four state troopers extensively searched the car and repeatedly interrogated both Clayborne and Williams throughout the two-and-a-half-hour traffic stop at a gas station off Interstate 24, according to the lawsuit.
After discovering marijuana in the car, which the lawsuit says was less than five grams, the troopers arrested Williams and Clayborne. They were both charged with simple possession, a misdemeanor. The lawsuit claims that in Tennessee, simple possession is a "citation-only offense" and that unless there is an exception outlined in state law, "instead of keeping the person in custody, the police are required to issue the person a citation and let them go."
Willie Santana, a criminal defense lawyer not involved in the case and former professor who publishes research in this area of law, said that "law does say that under most circumstances, a person charged with misdemeanor like simple possession should be cited."
However, the troopers took Williams to the jail in a cruiser and told Clayborne to follow them to meet with DCS at the jail. Once she arrived, DCS employees questioned Clayborne in the car where her five children were. They asked her to go inside the jail and complete a urine drug test, but Clayborne objected and said she was uncomfortable leaving her children with a stranger, the lawsuit says.
A DCS employee then "demanded" she provide a urine sample in the car. Clayborne was unable to provide a urine sample, which DCS said "made matters worse" for her, according to the lawsuit.
At some point while Clayborne and her children were in the parking lot of the Coffee County Jail, DCS held an emergency ex parte hearing with Judge Greg Perry in Coffee County General Sessions Court to get an order to take her children away, the lawsuit says. Clayborne said she was not informed of the hearing or given a chance to participate. Officers with the Coffee County Sheriff's Office also placed spike strips around her car so she could not leave, the lawsuit says.
Her children were taken and placed in separate foster homes for 14 days before being placed with a family friend, the lawsuit says. DCS returned Clayborne's children on April 13, 2023, after she got a court order to get them back.
Williams entered a guilty plea in August 2023 to the simple possession charge, court records show. The charge against Clayborne was dropped the same day.
The family is Black. The case drew the attention and criticism from activists in Tennessee and nationwide who questioned whether race played a role in the traffic stop and DCS' decision to remove the children from the family.
The embattled children's welfare agency has come under fire for years for management failures and severe understaffing that the department's leader called "horrific."
The lawsuit names the four Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers in their individual capacities; three DCS employees in their individual capacities; the Coffee County Sheriff's Office; and one named employee of the sheriff's office and 10 unnamed employees of the sheriff's office in their individual capacities. Clayborne, who is also suing on behalf of her five minor children, brings claims for violations of Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure, violations of due process protections and false arrest and imprisonment.
A captain in the Coffee County Sheriff's Office was not aware of the lawsuit when reached by phone Friday morning and said the office would not comment on pending litigation. The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, which oversees the Tennessee Highway Patrol, declined to comment.
The Attorney General's Office, which represents DCS in lawsuits, declined to comment on the pending litigation.
More: 'Little to no support': Inside the 2022 staffing collapse at DCS and the plan to fix it
Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him at emealins@gannett.com or follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @EvanMealins.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: DCS suit: GA mom sues after kids taken in Coffee County traffic stop
