Maryland Brain-Injury Confinement Case Tests Scope of ADA

In a case that could have "national import," advocates for the disabled are awaiting a ruling in a federal class-action lawsuit alleging that Maryland improperly confined people with brain injuries in state psychiatric hospitals in violation of the American with Disabilities Act, the Washington Post reports. The case, which has been running for more than seven years without a decision, was filed in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore in 1994 on behalf of 11 plaintiffs representing a class of about 60 people "with brain injury or some developmental disability unrelated to mental retardation." All were housed in state mental institutions, "despite their non-psychiatric diagnoses, and, in numerous instances, despite recommendations by treatment staff that they be transferred to less restrictive, more integrated residential settings," the Post reports. The case is expected to "further define" the ADA in light of a 1999 Supreme Court ruling that stated that the act "prohibits needless segregation of those with mental disabilities." Maryland has said that "it has met its ... obligation" to that ruling by having a "comprehensive, effectively working plan for community placement" of all mentally disabled patients, adding that it is "not required to address each kind of disability separately;" the state attorney general's office said that the state "may spread its dollars as it sees fit." But the Maryland Disability Law Center, the organization charged by state law with advocating for the mentally disabled, has said that the state has not adequately funded efforts to move brain-injured individuals out of psychiatric hospitals. Stanley Herr, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, said, "Olmstead had several significant caveats ... so disability rights advocates and state officials around the country are very interested in seeing how the lower courts will interpret those." The judge in the case said last week that she "hopes" to render a decision "by this summer" (Levine, Washington Post, 5/15).