The Legal Aid Society and Dechert launched a putative class-action suit Wednesday against state and city officials that challenges as unconstitutional and child-“traumatizing” rules that regularly prevent extended family members from serving as foster parents to their kin living in New York City.

The 74-page federal suit argues that parts of the state’s Social Services Law, along with certain city, state and federal polices, work to disqualify the potential foster-parent family members, based on the family member or a household member even decades ago having been criminally convicted, or perhaps only charged—or based on an indication of child abuse or neglect in a New York statewide registry that the suit contends has an extremely low threshold for such an indication.