The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is the federal agency that enforces the laws of the United States. The DOJ is thus the primary protector of the rights of individuals under the ADA, as well as other federal laws and the Constitution. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division in particular is tasked with responding to discrimination and violations of individual rights. The DOJ may offer its input in private lawsuits, it may respond to and act on complaints brought to its attention by individuals, or it may bring its own legal actions. Investigations and lawsuits regarding disability rights that are brought or joined by the DOJ are intended to force change broadly. They may be directed at one police department or one prison, but they are intended to be observed and set a precedent for others to follow.

DOJ Enforcement Related to Mental Disorders

Over the past decade, a significant number of DOJ-involved enforcement cases have focused on people with mental disorders in the criminal justice system. These cases assert that the rights of people with disabilities have been violated under the ADA, other federal laws, or the Constitution. These disability lawsuits continue to push forward change, slowly but surely, for the people who are the subject of our text. Cases range in topic, but the general theme is that an individual or a group of people are situated differently from others in terms of their ability to succeed, not due to the existence of their disability but because of the system’s failure to create a level playing field by properly accommodating it.

As a recent (and as of this writing, ongoing) example, the New York case M.G. v. Cuomo alleges that people with serious mental illness suffer from a lack of treatment and housing options upon release from prison. The gist of this lawsuit is that people with psychiatric disability are in a fundamentally different position than those without these diagnoses at the point of reentry into the community. This is because people with serious mental illness are much more likely to be confined in an institution, whether they are held in prison longer or whether they are released to institutional care. The lawsuit claims that the system needs to change to prevent that outcome. People shouldn’t be more likely to be confined due to a disability than to disability-neutral factors, such as the nature of their crime. Whatever its outcome, M.G. v. Cuomo will impact operations in New York and elsewhere (figure 3.18). New York specifically may be required to make changes based on the court’s decisions, but other states also will observe and learn (U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, 2024).

An Oregon example of DOJ enforcement of the rights of a group of people with mental disorders is the lawsuit that was brought by the DOJ and resolved by a settlement with the Portland Police Bureau in 2012. That case alleged that the Portland Police Bureau was engaged in a pattern of violations involving excessive force used against people with mental disorders. The killing of James Chasse, a Portland man with schizophrenia, was one among several events that gave rise to the case. This case resulted in the City of Portland agreeing to enact numerous changes and reforms. More information on that case, and about Chasse and his death, is provided in Chapter 5 of this text.

Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act

The 1980 Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) provides an option for the federal government to specifically protect the civil rights of people who are in institutions. This law was created after the 1970s public outcry against conditions at institutions that were still routinely housing people with mental disorders throughout the United States. An infamous offender was Willowbrook State School, a New York facility where thousands of children with mental disorders and disabilities were kept in horrid conditions and subjected to deeply unethical medical experimentation. This reality was brought into the public view when then-Senator Robert Kennedy toured the facility, calling it “a snake pit,” and a television documentary about the place, full of disturbing images, was released (Nicols, 2022). If you are interested in learning more about Willowbrook and its history, you may want to watch a recent Public Broadcasting Service video on the topic [Website].

The long-overdue legislation known as CRIPA does not focus specifically on people with disabilities; it applies to everyone who is in a facility (e.g., jail, prison, juvenile hall, or state hospital). However, numerous CRIPA cases do relate to people with mental disorders because this population is so heavily represented in institutions—and because they are so vulnerable to neglect and harm in these environments. In 2020, the DOJ concluded a CRIPA investigation of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (MDOC), ultimately concluding that MDOC had violated the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. MDOC had failed to properly supervise and care for prisoners who were in mental health crises, resulting in some of these prisoners hurting themselves, and even dying, while on supposed mental health watch (U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, 2020).

The DOJ also recently (in 2022) concluded a 2-year CRIPA investigation of the Parchman State Penitentiary, located in the Mississippi Delta. The prison is the state’s oldest, and it holds nearly 2,000 people. At Parchman, Black Mississippians make up 70% of the population, even though Black people make up only 37% of the state’s general population. In its investigation, the DOJ found that the Mississippi Department of Corrections had violated the Constitution in several specific ways, including failing to provide adequate treatment to people with serious mental illness, failing to enact sufficient suicide prevention, failing to prevent violence between confined people, and subjecting people to prolonged solitary confinement in egregious and harmful conditions. These violations had resulted in at least 10 homicides and 12 suicides at Parchman since 2019, when weeks of prison riots drew national attention to the long-standing problems.

The DOJ recognized that its work in the Parchman case targeted the intersection of race, disability, and criminal system involvement: “The importance of the department’s work in remedying unconstitutional conditions of confinement is significant and far-reaching. Over two million people currently reside in our nation’s prisons and jails. People of color and those with mental illness are disproportionately represented among them” (Clarke, 2022).

A documentary intended to expose the history of and conditions at Parchman, and to inform the public about the various legal actions there, was produced by Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by artist and entrepreneur Jay-Z, and aired on television in June 2023. Watch the clip from that program (linked in figure 3.19) if you are interested in learning more about Parchman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG-DObKhRi8

Licenses and Attributions for Government Enforcement of Disability Rights

Open Content, Original

“Government Enforcement of Disability Rights” by Anne Nichol is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open Content, All Rights Reserved

Figure 3.18. Photo of NYPD neon sign by Janne Simoes on Unsplash.

Figure 3.19. Exposing Parchman by Roc Nation is licensed under the Standard YouTube License.