The Legal Aid Society intervened in a lawsuit that challenged racial and religious discrimination in the administration of New York City’s foster care system, where white Roman Catholic and Jewish children were placed in institutions with services superior to those offered to Black Protestant children. At the time, New York City contracted with religiously affiliated childcare agencies to provide foster placement for most children. Religious agencies gave preferences to children of the religion with which they were affiliate. Because there were barely enough programs to serve the number of Catholic and Jewish children in the system, religious channeling practices resulted in the denial of equal services for non-Catholic and non-Jewish children, the majority of whom were Black. In 1984, the parties entered into a settlement agreement which drastically transformed New York City’s foster care system and established placements on a first-come, first- served basis to the best available program for each child in order to eliminate discrimination.

In 1993, Legal Aid intervened in the case to argue that Wilder’s settlement provisions did not apply to kinship foster care, where racial and religious discrimination is not typically an issue because family members are near-always of the same background as their related children. The Second Circuit disagreed, and in 1995, held that the consent decree covers all children in foster care.