Families in crisis trust Katherin Youniacutt, a grandmother who lives a quiet life with her husband in Lubbock. Besides a graduate degree in social work, she has experience as a recovering alcoholic with over a decade of sobriety.
Youniacutt is a role model, exactly the kind of person Texas should want as a social worker. But the state has banned her for life from licensure because of a mistake she made long ago. No matter what she does to rehabilitate herself and demonstrate her qualifications, she can never practice social work in Texas.
Trouble started for Youniacutt as a child and young adult, when she became a victim of clerical abuse and started drinking to cope. She hit bottom in 2007, when an off-duty police officer approached her vehicle late at night and reported an injury to himself when Youniacutt pulled away. She accepted responsibility for her actions by agreeing to plead guilty to drunk driving and to assault of a public servant.
Youniacutt apologized to the officer and was not sentenced to jail time for the assault. She tried to move on and successfully entered recovery on New Year’s Day in 2011. As she turned her life around, Youniacutt felt called to use her experience overcoming abuse and addiction to help others struggling with the same problems.
For five years, Youniacutt volunteered with a codependency group to help women and families in recovery. She then earned an undergraduate degree in social work at Lubbock Christian University in 2020 and a Master of Social Work at the University of Texas at Arlington in 2022.
Texas has a dire shortage of social workers, and Youniacutt found work immediately at Oceans Healthcare. The plan was for Youniacutt to take on a direct care role as soon as she received her social work license. But only after passing the state licensing exam in February 2023 did she learn that she is ineligible.
A harsh 2019 state law, enacted after Youniacutt started her social work training, imposes a lifetime ban on anyone with certain convictions, including Youniacutt’s assault charge.
The state licensing board cannot consider Youniacutt’s rehabilitation in the decade-plus since her conviction. Nor can it listen to the glowing recommendations that Youniacutt submitted. Under the 2019 law, it’s one strike and you’re out.
Texas families in need of services are the ultimate losers. An October 2024 report from the University of Texas at Austin shows a “significant deficit” in social workers, and the problem is projected to worsen.
Rather than accept the arbitrary denial of her right to earn an honest living in her chosen occupation, Youniacutt fought back with a lawsuit against the Texas State Board of Social Work Examiners and other state officials on November 13, 2024. Tammy Thompson, another aspiring social worker who struggled with similar issues in the 2000s, joined her. Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, represents them.
The premise of their case is simple: Permanent punishment that goes beyond court-imposed penalties is not only cruel and counterproductive, it’s unconstitutional.
Texas is penalizing honest people for who they were years ago rather than judging them for who they are today. People can change, and social workers with experience overcoming hardship are often in the best position to help others. The law ignores these realities.
The ban imposes an unreasonable burden on the right to earn an honest living, and that violates the Texas Constitution. But state lawmakers should not need the Constitution to remind them that people deserve second chances.
This is one reason redemption stories remain popular in literature. Movie audiences and book readers root for characters who climb back from bad decisions because on some level everyone can relate. Making mistakes and learning is part of the human condition.
None of this means people who have been arrested for felonies should escape consequences for their actions. But those consequences should be determined in the courtroom after a conviction, not by a legislature over a decade later. And once a person pays their debt to society, society must make room for re-entry.
Youniacutt and Thompson have worked hard. Now the state must get out of their way and let them provide urgently needed help to the many Texans who are still struggling.
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