Michael and Tasha Patterson are still fighting to get their children back after they were falsely accused of abusing them four years ago.
The couple has exhausted its legal options after the Florida Supreme Court rejected their request to hear their case — even after they provided plenty of evidence showing their twins have medical conditions that resulted in their injuries.
In my earlier reporting on the case, I detailed how the Pattersons rushed their premature twin boys, Micah and Malachi, to the hospital after noticing injuries when they were about eight weeks old. The doctors found multiple fractures and other issues and immediately accused the couple of physically abusing the boys.
The agency seized the twins and their older brother, Michael, who was eight years old at the time.
However, multiple medical experts, after examining the children’s records, determined that the twins have an underlying genetic disorder that causes bones to become brittle.
Nevertheless, Florida’s lower courts rejected the Pattersons’ legal requests and refused to look at their evidence. “They issued what’s called a per curiam affirmance, which means they just denied it,” Tasha Patterson told Townhall. “No reason, no nothing — they just denied it off the bat.”
Afterward, the family’s legal team filed a habeas petition with the Florida Supreme Court as a “Hail Mary” move to challenge Florida’s Department of Children and Families’ (DCF) decision to keep their children and adopt them out to another family.
However, the justices refused to even hear the family’s arguments. Tasha said her lawyer “put in a request for oral arguments to provide any clarification to them on what was going one, but they denied the request for oral arguments.”
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She added, “It was just a straight denial… on the court order they said nothing else would be entertained. No rehearing, nothing else would be entertained. It was just closed.”
Another medical misdiagnosis in Florida has fractured a factually innocent family.
— You Are The Power (@YATPOfficial) April 20, 2026
Michael and Tasha Patterson are unimpeachable victims of government overreach.
The Pattersons have fought for four years, trying to get someone to hear the truth; their twins are medically… pic.twitter.com/BylEGyOIrM
Their attorneys explained that the way the courts handled the case shows just how much the system is stacked against parents in these situations. Octavia Brown, who represents Tasha in the dependency case, told Townhall the higher courts moved the Pattersons’ case too fast to have seriously weighed the evidence. “When they render a PCA (Per Curiam Affirmed) like 24 to 48 hours after hundreds of documents have been sent in or submitted on behalf of each party, I, in my opinion, believe that there's no possible way that there could have been a meaningful review of the entire record.”
Now, DCF is the sole entity that could reverse its decision and reunite this family. Unfortunately, the agency has not been responsive when the family and their attorneys have tried engaging with them. “I would have thought that they would have been more communicative… But the communication, at least, from the perspective of the attorneys, has been minimal in my opinion,” Brown said.
Valentina Villalobos, another attorney representing the family, has handled similar cases in Florida. “My understanding from those conversations is that there's about 15 of these cases right now in the state of Florida,” she said.
The lawyer explained how child welfare cases are still treated as civil matters, which makes it easier for DCF to continue taking children under false allegations of abuse. “We treat these cases as civil, and you do not have the same protections you get in a criminal case,” she said.
“You don’t get juries in these cases… I don’t think a jury of her peers ever would have convicted Tasha, ever,” she added.
State Sen. Barbara Sharief has collaborated with several other lawmakers to help families like the Pattersons. She said the patterns she saw in this case and others pushed her to action in the legislature.
After examining the records, she could not see how DCF would determine the parents are guilty of abusing their children. She noted that the agency typically decides parents are “guilty from the very first time that the first accusation is made.”
She and other lawmakers championed a measure known as Patterson’s Law, a bill aimed at slowing down the process and ensuring better access to medical expertise for families who have been accused of child abuse. “We had about 15 cases of this… and so it caught the attention of about 5 of us,” Sharief told Townhall. “Our process for removal and termination of parental rights moves a lot quicker than the process to allow these parents to turn in this information, get the right specialist to help them.”
The bill passed in both chambers of the state legislature and is awaiting Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature. However, it will not apply retroactively, so the Patterson’s case won’t be affected.
“We were just trying to stop this from happening to other families and to give other families the opportunity. But we knew that it wouldn't affect the Pattersons' case.” Sharief said.
The family has set up a GoFundMe page to help with their legal expenses.
Advocacy organization You Are The Power has launched an email campaign to DCF on behalf of the family.
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