DCFS director found in contempt for noncompliance with judge’s order
[October 30, 2026]
By Ben Szalinski
SPRINGFIELD — A Sangamon County judge held the director of the state’s
child protective agency in contempt of court Thursday for the
department’s ongoing mishandling of a records request by Capitol News
Illinois.
“I understand this is not a department with 10 employees. It’s a
department with thousands of people who work there, but the buck stops
at the director’s office,” Judge Jack Davis said Thursday in explaining
his indirect civil contempt finding, a decision that found the agency
director willfully violated a court order and allows remedies to ensure
future compliance.
Davis ruled Director Heidi Mueller’s Department of Children and Family
Services violated his June 10 order requiring DCFS to release personnel
records for two caseworkers involved in the death of Mackenzi Felmlee,
and pay attorney costs, fees and a $5,000 civil penalty within 30 days.
The order came after DCFS attorneys failed to appear at multiple
hearings.
Mueller took the witness stand on Thursday and blamed a long series of
missteps by DCFS administrative employees for why the department failed
to appear. She said she learned about the case the day after Capitol
News Illinois reported on Davis’ Aug. 11 ruling that required her to
appear in court and explain why the department was not following his
June order.
Davis said he was willing to give DCFS the “benefit of the doubt,”
saying the failures that happened prior to Aug. 12 “can be classified, I
think accurately, as ineptness and as incompetence, a lack of oversight,
a lack of communication” — but not as “willful” contempt.
But he also faulted the agency for failing to produce records within
five days of learning of the court action and for still not having
paid the civil penalties he ordered nearly 80 days after the director
confirmed she learned of his order.
“As of August 12, the buck had been sufficiently transferred up the
chain of command to the desk where it stops,” he said, later adding that
noncompliance after that point equates to “willful” contempt.
History of the case
The case dates back to March, when CNI sued the agency for erroneously
denying its Freedom of Information Act request by citing, among other
points of denial, that the news organization’s records request had not
requested records.
Springfield attorney Don Craven’s office, which is representing CNI,
served DCFS with a summons on March 23, but the department did not
respond to that lawsuit. That led CNI to file a motion for default
judgment and to once again cause the agency to be served.
Those documents were handled by an administrative assistant, but the
agency said they were never properly logged or sent to DCFS’ legal team.
Mueller said the initial summons was found on the desk of an
administrative assistant at its Springfield office, where it sat for
months.
Her executive assistant, who died unexpectedly last fall, had been in
charge of overseeing nonlawyer administrative staff, she said. The
administrative team that took over the process didn’t handle it
properly, Mueller testified, adding they’ve since put a new process in
place.
“I did not ignore it and my legal team didn’t ignore it. It was served
on an administrative assistant who didn’t know, who didn’t handle it
properly,” Mueller said. “There wasn’t an intentional attempt to ignore
it.”
Davis also grew annoyed with the department’s filing — or lack thereof
— of a motion to vacate his June 10 order.
Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Haas, who represented DCFS, filed
the petition electronically after 5 p.m. Wednesday, arguing the agency
complied with the order by releasing heavily redacted documents.
But it never reached Davis’ desk until Thursday morning’s hearing,
during which Haas handed him a copy.
“It seems to kind of work in lockstep with the history of what the
department has done by taking a laissez-faire approach,” Davis said.
It’s at least the second time in the last five years a judge has found a
DCFS director in contempt of court. In 2022, then-Director Marc Smith
was assessed contempt charges after the agency failed to follow a Cook
County judge’s order to place children discharged from psychiatric
hospitals into appropriate care settings. Those charges were later
overturned by an appellate court.
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Department of Children and Family Services Director Heidi Mueller
testifies in Sangamon County court on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026.
(Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Campbell)
Gov. JB Pritzker stuck by Smith until Smith resigned in October 2023.
Mueller was appointed in early 2024.
“The core of the legal matter – which was the release of documents – was
completed by DCFS on September 3, 2026, and Director Mueller has the
full confidence of the Governor,” a spokesperson for Pritzker said in a
statement.
Tardy records and payments
As for the denied Freedom of Information Act request, Mueller said that
a staff member filling in for the department’s FOIA officer, who was at
a conference at the time, sent a template response to CNI denying the
records request.
“We had previously created an electronic system with dropdowns to help
us manage the huge volume of FOIA requests that we get,” she said. “She
clicked the wrong dropdown and it produced automatically a letter that
was incorrect.”
Mueller acknowledged that was a mistake and the department should’ve
produced the records. DCFS produced the records in early September,
months after the initial request, with heavy redactions, though state
law and the judge’s order require FOIA requests to be fulfilled within
five business days.
Haas said the FOIA officer was dealing with a medical issue in August,
which caused the delay in responding once the department learned of the
lawsuit.
“You don’t get to just say ‘oops,'” Craven told Davis on why the
late-arriving documents proved willful contempt.
Craven said the case is the “epitome of bad faith” by DCFS.
Mueller also said DCFS intends to pay the court-ordered fines and fees,
which it has not, leading Davis to ask why DCFS is “picking and
choosing” which parts of the order it has followed thus far.
Haas said she believed she was negotiating the fees with Craven, sending
a settlement offer that the news organization ultimately denied in
mid-October.
Davis set a 30-day deadline for DCFS to comply with the records request
and court-ordered fines and fees. The next hearing is scheduled for Dec.
4 to determine whether the contempt charge will be purged.
The judge granted Capitol News Illinois’ Thursday motion to amend its
initial request to receive further documents regarding Felmlee’s care.
Mackenzi Felmlee’s care
CNI requested the documents while trying to learn more about the care
Felmlee, 18, received before she was found dead in her Fairview Heights
foster home in May 2024.
Her foster mother, Shemeka Williams, and foster grandmother, Cornelia
Reid, are charged with murder in connection with Mackenzi’s death. Both
are being held in the St. Clair County Jail. Williams was licensed
through Lutheran Child and Family Services, a nonprofit agency that
provides foster care services on contract for DCFS.
According to a timeline of the incident released by DCFS, Williams
purportedly told an LCFS caseworker during an in-person visit that
Mackenzi was “struggling” two days before her death.
The caseworker, however, did not document that conversation until five
days after Mackenzi’s death. LCFS later reported the visit was made by
phone, not in person.
Capitol News Illinois
is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state
government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded
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