Maine hit with federal lawsuit over ADA violations

(The Center Square) — The Justice Department is taking Maine to court over its segregation of children with behavioral problems in hospitals and juvenile detention facilities, alleging civil rights violations.

A lawsuit filed by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division argues that Maine's policy violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Supreme Court's 1999 Olmstead ruling, which is aimed at ensuring that people with disabilities receiving government assistance aren't needlessly isolated.

“The State of Maine has an obligation to protect its residents, including children with behavioral health disabilities, and such children should not be confined to facilities away from their families and community resources,” Kristen Clarke, an assistant attorney general with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.

Mills administration officials say the state has worked to strengthen children’s behavioral health services and has cooperated with the Justice Department to address previous claims about the alleged violations.

"We are deeply disappointed that the U.S. DOJ has decided to sue the state rather than continue our collaborative, good-faith effort to strengthen the delivery of children’s behavioral health services,” Lindsay Hammes, a spokesperson for the state Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement. "The State of Maine will vigorously defend itself."

The ADA and the Olmstead decision require states to ensure the services they provide for children with disabilities are available in the most integrated setting appropriate to each child’s needs, according to the Justice Department. That includes assistance with daily activities, behavior management and individual or family counseling that can help prevent a child from being institutionalized during a mental health crisis.

A 2022 Justice Department investigation found that Maine’s community-based behavioral health system fails to provide sufficient services. As a result, hundreds of children are "unnecessarily segregated in institutions each year, while other children are at serious risk of entering institutions," according to a DOJ report.

As a result, Maine children end up in hospitals or residential facilities, including the state-operated juvenile detention facility, Long Creek Youth Development Center, to receive behavioral health services.

Others are at serious risk of entering these facilities as their families struggle to keep them home despite the lack of necessary services, the lawsuit alleges.

"Families across Maine must be able to access local community-based services for their children with behavioral health disabilities,” U.S. Attorney Darcie N. McElwee for Maine, said in a statement. "The alleged violations identified by the Justice Department must be remedied so that these children and their families can obtain services in their own communities, as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act."

Disability advocates, who have been urging the Justice Department to crack down on Maine for years, praised the lawsuit and hoped it would force the state to make the long-awaited changes to the system.

“Twenty-five years after the landmark Supreme Court decision Olmstead v. L.C., which found that unnecessarily segregating people with disabilities into institutional settings violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, Maine children and their families are still waiting for a legally compliant behavioral health system," Atlee Reilly, managing attorney at Disability Rights Maine, said in a statement.

"And despite calls for more than a decade to ensure the availability of those services, Maine has failed to do so," Reilly said. "Unfortunately, this lawsuit was the necessary result of that continued failure."