Landmark Mental Disability Suit Settled After 30 Years
Washington DC, January 21, 2000—The class-action
lawsuit that first established a constitutional right to treatment for
people in mental institutions is over at last, pending a judge's approval,
30 years after being filed in federal court in Alabama.
Alabama officials signed an agreement late yesterday to maintain improvements
already made for current and future residents of state psychiatric facilities
or developmental centers and those who have been moved out into community
residences, and to develop a three-year plan for further progress.
The suit now known as Wyatt v. Sawyer, was filed in 1970, challenging
a shortage of staff in state facilities housing a total of 9,200 people.
In 1972, the late U.S. District Judge Frank M. Johnson declared that people
involuntarily confined in such institutions have a constitutional right
to treatment in exchange for being deprived of their liberty. Judge Johnson
then defined the meaning of "treatment" with minimum standards covering
every aspect of institutional life and a requirement that treatment be
provided in the least restrictive setting consistent with an individual's
need.
"The Wyatt case improved services for people with mental illnesses
or mental retardation all across the country," said Ira Burnim, legal
director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, who represented
the plaintiff class from 1985 through mid-1999. "It established that states
could no longer warehouse people, but would have to make appropriate services
available to them."
For the past 15 years, the litigation has focused on programs to enable
Alabamans with mental disabilities to live in the community. "We are especially
heartened that Alabama, like many other states, will continue expanding
possibilities for people with mental disabilities to have normal lives,"
Burnim added. The agreement calls for moving 600 more patients to community
programs over the next three years, leaving fewer than 1,000 in the state's
large institutions.
Burnim's successor in the case, James Tucker of the Alabama Disabilities
Advocacy Program, will monitor conditions to make sure the state is complying.
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The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is the leading legal advocacy
organization representing people with mental illness and mental retardation.
For more information on the Bazelon Center, please visit www.bazelon.org.
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