THE OFFICE OF CHILDREN AND FAMILY SERVICES (OCFS) DID NOT EXCEED ITS AUTHORITY IN CREATING THE HOST FAMILY PROGRAM FOR TEMPORARY PLACEMENT OF CHILDREN AND FAMILIES (THIRD DEPT).

The Third Department, in a full-fledged opinion by Justice Garry, over a two-justice dissenting opinion, determined the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) did not exceed its authority when creating the Host Family Home program for temporary placement of children and families. The appellants argued the Host Family Home program was essentially a foster care program without the legislative foster-care safeguards:

The subject regulations established the Host Family Home program (see 18 NYCRR 444.1), which aims to provide “supportive services . . . to children and their families . . . for the purpose of: assisting a family in need of day-to-day community-based supports by peers, arranging for parents and children to be temporarily cared for together in a host family home, and/or temporarily supporting a family when a parent has determined that he/she is temporarily unable to care for their child . . . as a way to avert the need for more formal child welfare intervention” … . * * *

Petitioners’ argument that OCFS exceeded its authority when it created the Host Family Home program is unpersuasive. “Administrative agencies have all the powers expressly delegated to them by the Legislature, and are permitted to adopt regulations that go beyond the text of their enabling legislation, so long as those regulations are consistent with the statutory language and underlying purpose” … . “While an administrative agency may not, in the exercise of rule-making authority, engage in broad-based public policy determinations, the cornerstone of administrative law is the principle that the Legislature may declare its will, and after fixing a primary standard, endow administrative agencies with the power to fill in the interstices in the legislative product by prescribing rules and regulations consistent with the enabling legislation” … . * * *

On balance, the Boreali factors [Boreali v Axelrod, 71 NY2d 1] lead us to the conclusion that the Host Family Home program regulations are a valid exercise of OCFS’s rulemaking authority, bringing an end to our inquiry. We emphasize that “[o]ur role in this regard is not to question the efficacy or wisdom of the means chosen by the agency to accomplish the ends identified by the [L]egislature” … . As we have also found that the regulations are consistent with the governing statutory language and its purpose, we affirm. Matter of Lawyers for Children v New York State Off. of Children & Family Servs., 2025 NY Slip Op 02115, Third Dept 4-10-25

Practice Point: Consult this opinion for an in-depth analysis of the authority of an agency to promulgate regulations.