Federal judge rejects DC request to dismiss mental health crisis lawsuit

WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against the District of Columbia’s practice of sending police officers to respond to mental health emergencies on Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes found that the plaintiff Bread for the City — a local nonprofit aid group that provides food, clothing, health care and other services to homeless individuals — had plausibly argued harm from the city’s practices.

“I conclude that Bread has plausibly alleged that individuals with mental health disabilities are denied the benefits of the District’s emergency response system," Reyes said in her Tuesday oral ruling.

The Joe Biden appointee explained that because she was considering the city’s motion to dismiss the suit, she only needed to find the aid group’s claims plausible to allow the case to move forward and further proceedings would fill out the factual record.

In the aid group’s original lawsuit, brought in July 2023, it argued that by sending armed Metropolitan Police Department officers as the “default first responders,” the city is depriving those in crisis of the same treatment people suffering physical health emergencies receive.

The organization claims the city’s practice of sending police officers to respond to mental health crises has forced it to begin providing mental health services themselves and avoid calling 911 altogether. As a result, it began training staff in de-escalation tactics, which had resulted in hours-long efforts to address emergencies to avoid involving the police.

Those new services detract from the aid group’s original mission and costs money, a clear injury that gives the group standing to sue the city over its response practices, Reyes said.

Further, the group argued that if it were to call the police to address a mental health emergency at their facilities, the officers’ presence would make their clients uncomfortable and their likely escalation would diminish the trust their clients have for the group.

Michael Perloff, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union for D.C. who represents the aid group in the case, applauded Reyes’ ruling in a statement.

“Relying on mental health professionals, not armed police, to serve people experiencing mental health crises is not just logical, it’s required under the law,” Perloff said in the statement. “Today’s decision made clear that communities can’t single out mental health emergencies for worse services than other health emergencies.”

In its motion to dismiss, the city had pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, where a group of doctors and medical groups challenged the agency’s expansion of access for the abortion drug mifepristone.

The high court threw out the challenge because the medical groups had failed to state an injury that gave them the right to sue, equating their claims with the aid group’s.

Reyes said both groups’ claims were not the same. She explained that in the mifepristone case, the doctors argued they had to spend resources on research and advocacy opposing the Food and Drug Administration’s actions, which did not amount to an injury to their core activities.

“[Bread for the City] alleges that having staff respond to emergencies keeps them from providing other clients with the basic services that are part of Bread’s mission, which prevents Bread both from fulfilling its mission of providing those services and from obtaining revenue by billing for those services,” Reyes said. “All of those expenditures were allegedly ‘in response to and to counteract the effect of defendants alleged unlawful acts.’”

While Tuesday’s ruling allows the case to proceed to the fact-finding, or discovery, process that precedes a trial, the parties have been participating in mediation meetings to potentially settle the case.

At an April status conference, both parties expressed agreement that there are issues with the city’s practice, but to that point the parties had only met once since Reyes ordered mediation in December, primarily due to the city’s refusal to accept the aid group’s help.

However, on Tuesday, Ashoka Verriest, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Criminal law Reform Project, told Reyes that the mediation process remained ongoing, with a meeting conducted in July and future meetings proposed for Sept. 24 and 29.

Following the hearing, Verriest said in the ACLU’s statement that the mental health crisis “must end.”

“This ruling moves us one step closer to brining essential, life-saving emergency mental health care to D.C. communities,” Verriest said. “Qualified providers are best equipped to handle mental health emergencies with skills and compassion; police with a gun only serve to escalate, handcuff and arrest.”

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