Department of Justice sues Maine for treatment of children with behavioral health disabilities

Maine unnecessarily segregates children with behavioral health disabilities in hospitals, residential facilities and a state-run juvenile detention facility, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday in a lawsuit seeking to force the state to make changes.

The actions violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Supreme Court's 1999 Olmstead ruling that aimed to ensure that people with disabilities aren't needlessly isolated while receiving government help, federal investigators contend.

The Justice Department notified Maine of its findings of civil rights violations in a June 2022 letter, pointing to what it described as a lack of sufficient community-based services that would allow the children to stay in their homes.

At the time, the department recommended that Maine use more state resources to maintain a pool of community-based service providers. It also recommended that Maine implement a policy that requires providers to serve eligible children and prohibit refusal of services.

“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.

The governor and Legislature have worked to strengthen children’s behavioral health services, said Lindsay Hammes, a spokesperson for the state Department of Health and Human Services. The DHHS has also worked with the Justice Department to address its initial allegations from 2022, she said.

“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,” Hammes said. “The State of Maine will vigorously defend itself.”

In 2022, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said improving behavioral health services for Maine children was one of her goals. Her administration also said that the shortcomings of the state’s behavioral health system stretched back many years, and that the COVID-19 pandemic set back progress.

Advocates welcomed the lawsuit, noting that 25 years after the Olmstead decision, children in Maine and their families are still waiting for the state to comply with the ruling.

“Despite calls for more than a decade to ensure the availability of those services, Maine has failed to do so. Unfortunately, this lawsuit was the necessary result of that continued failure,” said Atlee Reilly, managing attorney for Disability Rights Maine.

The ADA and Olmstead decision require state and local governments to ensure that the services they provide for children with disabilities are available in the most integrated setting appropriate to each child’s needs, investigators said.

Services can include assistance with daily activities, behavior management and individual or family counseling. Community-based behavioral health services also include crisis services that can help prevent a child from being institutionalized during a mental health crisis.

The lawsuit alleges that Maine administers its system in a way that limits behavioral health services in the community.

As a result, in order for Maine children to receive behavioral health services, they must enter facilities including the state-operated juvenile detention facility, Long Creek Youth Development Center. Others are at serious risk of entering these facilities, as their families struggle to keep them home despite the lack of necessary services.

The future of Long Creek has been a subject of much debate in recent years. In 2021, Mills vetoed a bill to close the facility last year.