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Chalk one up for the underdog.

The Greensboro orphan known as "John G.," who sued the DSS to keep the house left him in his father's will, has won a court case being watched by child advocates nationwide.

In a unanimous opinion handed down Tuesday, the N.C. Court of Appeals flatly denied a claim by the county DSS.

The agency wanted to pocket the monthly $571 Social Security benefit John's father left him and not use part of the boy's money to pay the $221 monthly mortgage on a small Habitat for Humanity house the parent left John, now 17.

The case, first reported in this space in 2005, was unusual enough to be written up in national law journals and on the front page of The New York Times. And even though most foster kids don't have houses or pensions left to them, the Maryland law professor quoted in the opinion said the ruling has implications for thousands of children across the country.

"It stands for the very simple fact that the best interests of foster children should be the guiding principle for all decisions," professor Dan Hatcher of the University of Baltimore Civil Advocacy Law Clinic said Tuesday. "That the very agency charged with protecting and serving these children is fighting this is both ironic and deeply troubling."

Attorneys for the county DSS, who did not return phone messages Tuesday, had argued in the appeal that a Guilford County judge overstepped her authority when she ruled on the boy's behalf two Christmases back.

With the house nearing foreclosure and no legal guardian but the DSS to manage John's affairs, District Judge Susan Bray ordered DSS to make back payments and repairs.

Court-appointed advocates for the boy reasoned that John, whose mother abandoned him when he was 3 and whose adoptive father died the same year, will need a place to live when he ages out of foster care at 18.

Despite its unique circumstances, the case became a flash point for both sides of the issue. First Star, a national child advocacy group lobbying for a federal law to stop the pocketing of an estimated $150 million per year in foster children's disability benefits, signed on as a friend of the court.

On the opposing side, so did the N.C. Association of County Commissioners, fearing that a victory for John G. would represent a costly defeat for budget-strapped counties, which pick up as much as 50 percent of the foster care tab. In North Carolina, that's more than 10,000 children; nationally, it's a half-million.

"They are budget-starved. But the answer is not to steal from children," said public interest lawyer Lewis Pitts, an attorney for John G. "The answer is to come forward and make the public aware that there's a crisis in child welfare spending."

The pressure is on states to provide foster children the bare necessities, leaving aside such "extras" as tutors, clothing allowances and summer camp. And so great is that pressure, observers say, that some locales are trying to identify children eligible for Social Security — for the purpose of using it toward foster care upkeep.

If John G. lived in Maryland, noted law professor Hatcher, there would even be a rule allowing the DSS to liquidate the boy's house. And though it remains to be litigated case by case, Tuesday's opinion implied in a footnote that there might be "viable constitutional objections" to the practice of charging foster children for care.

The Guilford DSS had argued that Judge Bray's order broke a rule against attaching liens to Social Security.

Not so, the appellates wrote: That protection was meant to "shield" the needy, not to be turned as "sword" against them.

Because of Bray's order in the interim, the house still belongs to the boy and has been rented out until he no longer lives with his current foster family.

John, a high school student, could not be reached for comment.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lahearn@news-record.com