The federal Department of Justice (DOJ) has sued the State of Maine for allegedly violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by “unnecessarily segregating children with behavioral health disabilities in hospitals, residential facilities and a state-operated juvenile detention facility.”
The DOJ filed their lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Portland Monday, explaining that they had notified the State in June 2022 of its “findings of civil rights violations” and “identified steps that Maine should take to remedy” them.
According to their complaint, the State of Maine “segregates hundreds of children with mental health and/or developmental disabilities, referred to throughout as behavioral health disabilities, away from their families and communities in institutions in- and out-of-state.”
“Maine administers its behavioral health service system for children in a manner that gives the families and guardians of these children no meaningful choice other than institutions,” the DOJ wrote. “This leaves hundreds of children separated from their families and segregated from their communities.”
The DOJ goes on to suggest that the state “in theory” provides an “array of behavioral health services” designed to “help children with disabilities avoid or recover from mental health crises and manage their behavioral health disabilities so that they can stay in their homes and communities.”
“In reality, Maine fails to provide children access to community-based behavioral health services,” they wrote. Instead, “hundreds of children are segregated in institutions because they cannot access the community-based services they are entitled to receive.”
“Most Maine children who have had to enter institutions could live at home with a family if they could access the services they need there,” said the DOJ.
Because of how Maine allegedly administers its system, however, the DOJ contends that children are subsequently forced to repeatedly enter state run facilities, including state-operated juvenile detention facility, Long Creek Youth Development Center, in order to receive behavioral health services, while others are at serious risk of entering them.
As a result of this lawsuit, the DOJ is looking for the courts to legally compel Maine to provide home- and community-based behavioral health services rather than “unnecessarily segregating them or placing them at serious risk of unnecessary segregation in institutions.”
Click Here to Read the DOJ’s Full Complaint
“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,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Civil Rights Division is committed to ensuring that people with disabilities can get the services they need to remain at home with their families and loved ones, in their communities.”
“Families across Maine must be able to access to local community-based services for their children with behavioral health disabilities,” said U.S. Attorney Darcie N. McElwee for the District of Maine. “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.”
Click Here to Read the DOJ’s Full Press Release
In a statement to the Portland Press Herald, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Lindsay Hammes said that the Mills administration agrees that Maine “like every state — has an obligation to protect children with behavioral health disabilities and that such services should be provided within communities to the greatest extent possible.”
“That is why over the past six years [Gov. Janet Mills] and the Legislature have provided significant new investments to strengthen children’s behavioral health services, and why the Maine [DHHS] had been working closely with the [DOJ] to address its initial allegations from March, 2022,” Hammes continued.
Hammes went on to say that state officials 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.”
“The state of Maine will vigorously defend itself and, throughout the litigation, will continue to work hard to strengthen the delivery of what we all agree are vital services,” said Hammes.
