WASHINGTON (CN) — U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes grew increasingly frustrated during a three-hour hearing on Tuesday over a motion to dismiss a discrimination lawsuit relating to the city’s practice of sending police officers to respond to mental health crises, an issue that all parties agreed required action.
While the majority of the proceeding was dedicated to discussing whether the Joe Biden appointee could dismiss the case over legal technicalities, her frustration came to a head in the final half hour while grilling Assistant Attorney General Adam Daniel.
Reyes summoned Daniel to the lectern to discuss the results of a Dec. 19 order she had issued, which required the parties to regularly participate in a working group meant to find consensus on the issue, regardless of the results of the litigation.
Daniels revealed that over four months — and a Feb. 26 order reiterating the judge's expectations that the parties continue meeting regularly — the group had met twice, for a total of two hours.
“I just spent three hours arguing this issue today plus dozens of hours reading both parties' briefs in preparation for today, because that’s my job,” Reyes said in response to Daniels's assertion that the working group was an “undue burden” on city officials.
She said she was appalled by the government’s apparent disregard for both her time and her instructions, asking whether she needed to again order the parties to meet, this time with a mediator present to “babysit” them.
Daniels insisted that a mediator was not necessary, rather that the issue was the government did not need outside experts and wanted to resolve the issue at “the proper time."
"This is the proper time, people are getting hurt,” Reyes said, emphasizing the fact that people with mental health conditions remain at risk while the city’s policy of sending police officers to deal with mental health emergencies stood.
She decried the city's apparent distaste for "out-of-the-box thinking" as the "height of hubris."
Tuesday’s proceedings stem from a July 2023 lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by nonprofit aid group Bread for the City. The group argues 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.
In the complaint, the activist group outlines a pattern of the city prioritizing physical over mental health, creating a system where those in mental crisis can either get a timely response from police or adequate care from mental health professionals, but not both.
In a Jan. 19 motion to dismiss, the city argues that there is no discrimination because people with mental health disabilities get the same physical emergency care as everyone else. The expansion of mental health emergency response, as the city interpreted the aid group’s goal, is a demand for new services, which is “a policy argument, not a legal claim,” the city wrote.
The majority of arguments Tuesday were dedicated to the proper definition of service under the law, specifically whether emergency response constituted one or multiple services, on which Reyes’ decision would hinge.
In the city’s view, as argued by Assistant Attorney General Pamela Disney, the emergency response program is made up of multiple services — 911 operators who receive the calls and dispatch to certain responders, the responders themselves and others — and therefore the aid group’s discrimination claim cannot stand.
Michael Perloff, an ACLU D.C. staff attorney representing the aid group, argued that emergency response services are a single government service, thus the disparate treatment of people in physical emergencies versus mental health emergencies amounts to discrimination. He decried the city’s attempts to use the intricacies of the law to shoot down the suit.
“You shouldn’t be able to narrow your way out of discrimination,” Perloff said, referring to the city’s reading of the law. “What’s happening here seems discriminatory and that’s because it is.”
Reyes did not come to a decision Tuesday but repeatedly said that despite the potential strength of the city’s legal arguments, it was clear that the practice of sending police to mental health emergencies was discriminatory and dangerous.
Minutes after adjourning, Reyes issued an order requiring the parties to provide a reason, if any, why she should not order mediation with a mediator. Soon after, she issued a second order for the parties to provide supplemental briefing on how to define service and provide case law that she could rely on in making her decision.
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