A U.S. District Court judge has rejected an effort by Maine and the Justice Department to rollback the requirements of a settlement over the state violating the civil rights of children with disabilities.
In her 24-page order dated Nov. 24, U.S. District Court Judge Stacey Neumann said that the state and U.S. governments had failed to prove that present circumstances and the public interest justify the changes.
“Disability Rights Maine is pleased for Maine children and families, and relieved that the court ruled against weakening the settlement agreement,” Atlee Reilly, the managing attorney for Disability Rights Maine, which sought to block the changes with the Maine ALCU, GLAD Law and the Center for Public Representation, said in a Friday statement. “We are hopeful that Maine and the United States will now turn their focus and resources toward implementing the original settlement they negotiated and addressing the longstanding failure to deliver appropriate services to children in their homes and communities.”
The Department of Justice notified Maine in June 2022 that its failure to provide timely and appropriate behavioral health services for children amounted to systematic discrimination. Two years later, the federal government sued the state, alleging it was unnecessarily institutionalizing children with behavioral health disabilities, separating them from their families and segregating them from their communities.
In its 2024 complaint, the Justice Department accused Maine of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision, which require state and local governments to provide services to children with disabilities in the least restrictive setting appropriate to their needs. At the time, the Justice Department said that community-based services, such as programs where behavioral health clinicians work with children in their homes, can prevent them from ending up in institutions like emergency rooms, psychiatric hospitals, residential facilities in and out of state, or the state’s youth prison.
In the complaint, the Justice Department said that Maine “in theory” uses Medicaid and other public funds to support such services, but in reality, the state administers them in a way that offers parents and guardians “no meaningful choice” other than institutions, separating those children from their families and segregating them from their communities.
“When Maine children are placed in institutions, such as psychiatric hospitals, juvenile detention, and other residential facilities, they miss the chance to wake up in their own beds, to develop bonds with family and friends, and to go to school with their siblings and peers,” the Justice Department wrote at the time.
The allegations in the 2024 lawsuit echoed the findings of previous reports, including a critical review of Maine’s behavioral health system for children in 2018, which identified long waiting lists for community-based services, increasing the likelihood of a behavioral health crisis that prompted families to call police or seek the hospital.
In 2020, a comprehensive assessment of the state’s juvenile justice system found that far fewer adolescents would end up in Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, the state’s only juvenile detention center, if the state had a more robust behavioral health system.
The Mills administration contended that it and the Maine Legislature have worked to strengthen community-based services for children in recent years investing more money into behavioral health programs. In 2022, a spokesperson told the Bangor Daily News the problems Maine faces in providing care for children go back decades, and the COVID-19 pandemic set back the state as it made it difficult for providers to hire and maintain staff.
But the Justice Department called the state’s investments insufficient, backing up complaints from families and advocacy groups that inadequate access to services has persisted, if not worsened, in recent years.
Just two months after that lawsuit was filed, the state and Justice Department announced that they had reached a settlement to improve access to services for children with disabilities.
Then this past September, Maine and the Justice Department sought to rollback key elements of that settlement, including requirements for outreach, training and reporting, as well as for an independent reviewer to verify compliance with both the settlement and federal law, according to Neumann’s ruling.
“In denying this motion, the court affirmed that independent, external oversight is essential,” Carol Garvan, legal director at the ACLU of Maine, said in a Friday statement. “The role of an independent reviewer is critical in ensuring that Maine keeps its promises to children with disabilities and follows through on long-overdue reforms. A child’s right to live and thrive in their community is a fundamental right that must be continuously defended.”
In rejecting the proposed amendments, Neumann noted that both parties entered into the agreement voluntarily and that the changes they sought directly affect the rights of children with disabilities, which is “intrinsic to the nature of the Agreement at issue.”
Further, Neumann wrote that there is a strong public interest in ending this case and enforcing the settlement because “children’s legal, constitutional, and medical rights are at stake.”
BDN writer Callie Ferguson contributed to this report.
