Answer Addiction

Tag: Americans with Disabilities Act

  • Florida College Allegedly Flagged Applicants Who Mentioned Mental Health Struggles

    Florida College Allegedly Flagged Applicants Who Mentioned Mental Health Struggles

    A Florida liberal arts college is under investigation over allegations of “weeding out” applicants with a mental health history.

    A Florida college allegedly discriminated against applicants who may have mental health issues, according to a complaint filed by two former students.

    The admissions department of the New College of Florida (NCF) adopted a new policy in 2017 that “instituted a ‘red flag’ system for application review,” the complaint alleges. Under the instruction of Dr. Joy Hamm, the new Dean of Admissions at the time who implemented the policy, applications containing “any unusual or concerning details” were flagged for a second review.

    “[Dr. Hamm] actively instructed people to red-flag essays where students disclosed mental health issues and disabilities. We believe this may be a violation of the [Americans with Disabilities Act],” reads the complaint, which is available online.

    The students who filed the complaint, Maria Simmerling and Eugenia Quintanilla of the class of 2018, worked in the admissions department from 2015-2018. They say they were made aware of the practice through fellow staff who “feared retaliation if they spoke up.”

    The document goes on in more disturbing detail: “Dr. Hamm explicitly stated that she was trying to ‘weed out’ people with disabilities and mental health problems in our prospective student pool.”

    There were allegedly “multiple cases” of students who qualified for automatic admission but were rejected “after their essays were red-flagged for merely mentioning mental health struggles,” reads the complaint.

    After failing to get a serious response from the school, the NCF alumni decided to go public with the allegations. “People should not have to go through a second review process if they disclose mental health or disabilities in their application essays,” they stated.

    The school’s chief compliance officer Barbara Stier confirmed the use of red-flagging to Inside Higher Ed. However, she says that the practice was not designed to discriminate but to mark applicants who also have low test scores or lack certain academic requirements to indicate that they did not meet the criteria for admission.

    NCF President Donal O’Shea released a statement last Friday acknowledging the complaint. “New College very much values cognitive diversity,” he said. “The allegations in the complaints are absolutely antithetical to our values.”

    According to his statement, there will be a second, external investigation in May.

    Simmerling and Quintanilla say that the school’s internal investigation—which found no wrongdoing—was a “joke” and was treated as a mere “formality.”

    Even as they reached out to administration officials including O’Shea, members of HR and the provost, the students say their complaint was not taken seriously. “They all denied any wrongdoing, often with contradictory stories,” according to the complaint.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Woman Sues To Continue Methadone Treatment In Prison

    Woman Sues To Continue Methadone Treatment In Prison

    “I am afraid for my life and my safety if the Bureau of Prisons withholds medicine that I know I need,” the woman said in court filings. 

    For Stephanie DiPierro, methadone has been a lifesaving treatment. It helped her get sober from an opioid addiction in 2005, and since then has helped her stay away from illegal opioids.

    Now, DiPierro is suing the federal prison system for her right to use methadone while she serves her sentence. 

    “Methadone gave me my life back,” DiPierro wrote in court filings, according to The New York Times. She said that without methadone, her life is at risk. “I will lose control of my addiction and I will relapse, overdose and die.”

    Next month, DiPierro, who has bipolar disorder and anxiety, is set to start serving a year-long prison sentence. However, she argues that the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ ban on inmates (other than pregnant women) using methadone amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. 

    In court filings she wrote, “I am afraid of what it will mean to lose my methadone treatment at the exact moment when I am put in the most anxiety-producing situation of my life. I am afraid for my life and my safety if the Bureau of Prisons withholds medicine that I know I need.”

    DiPierro is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. ACLU staff lawyer Jessie Rossman says that in addition to being cruel and unusual punishment, denying DiPierro methadone treatment is discrimination. 

    “The Bureau of Prisons is denying her a reasonable accommodation for her disability, and also discriminating between different disabilities. Inmates with chronic conditions like diabetes are allowed to continue to take their medically necessary treatment,” Rossman said. “What’s now coming across loud and clear is that the standard of care to treat opioid use disorder is medication-assisted treatment, and it’s ineffective and unlawful to prevent individuals from accessing their treatment and medication for that disease.”

    Jails and prisons generally do not allow methadone. Some argue that this is because methadone is an opioid that can be diverted and abused, while others argue that it’s an arbitrary rule based on discrimination against people with substance use disorder. 

    Last year, Rossman represented a Massachusetts inmate who was looking to continue methadone treatment in county jail. A district court judge in Massachusetts issued a ruling that denying inmates methadone treatment is in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act and the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

    Former head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Michael Botticelli, executive director of the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center, told The New York Times that the ruling would likely set the stage for far-reaching change. 

    “One thing this ruling says is that, one way or another, either by legislation or by legal mandate, jails and prisons are going to have to do this,” he said. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Inmates With Mental Health Issues Kept After Release Dates, Lawsuit Alleges

    Inmates With Mental Health Issues Kept After Release Dates, Lawsuit Alleges

    “Our clients are told, often on the day they expect to be released from prison, that they will not be leaving and must stay until community housing is located,” said the executive director of Disability Rights New York.

    In theory, MG is not in prison. His release date was in May 2017.

    And yet, every day he wakes up in a windowless cell in the Auburn Correctional Facility. He wears green prison clothes, stands for count and identifies himself by the seven-digit number emblazoned on his shirt.  

    That’s because MG is mentally ill and bound for community-based mental health housing—but there’s no space. So instead, the New York prison system has kept him, locking him up even after his sentence has technically ended. 

    But MG isn’t the only prisoner held long past the expiration of his sentence. That’s why the Legal Aid Society and Disability Rights New York last week filed a class action lawsuit against the state’s prison system, the New York State Office of Mental Health, the prison system and Governor Andrew Cuomo, claiming violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and demanding that the state come up with better mental health housing options.  

    “Our clients are told, often on the day they expect to be released from prison, that they will not be leaving and must stay until community housing is located,” said Timothy Clune, executive director of Disability Rights New York. “Further, documents produced by the Defendants show that New York State is well aware of the shortage of mental health housing for this population. Instead of addressing this shortage the State has been ignoring the problem and our clients.”

    The six prisoners at the center of the new federal lawsuit are all mentally ill and at risk of homelessness, so the state decided they should be sent to supportive housing. But right now there isn’t enough, and when that happens, officials instead transfer prisoners like MG to one of 13 “residential treatment facilities”—all of which are in medium and maximum security prisons.

    In effect, according to the lawsuit, the prison system is lengthening their sentences because they’re mentally ill, in the process “undermining the most basic principle undergirding the criminal justice system: that a criminal sentence, once imposed by a judge, means what it says.”

    The state hasn’t responded in court to the legal claim just yet, and an Office of Mental Health official said they hadn’t been formally notified when reporters first started asking for comment.

    “This lawsuit was served to the media before it was served to us, so we can’t comment on its details,” spokeswoman Jessica Riley told The Albany Times-Union. “However, New York funds one of the most robust supportive housing networks in the nation for individuals with mental illness.”

    The state pours nearly $500 million a year into community-based housing for people with serious mental illness. Currently, that funds around 44,000 housing units statewide, and there’s plans to have 6,000 more online by 2021. 

    The other men in the lawsuit have stories similar to MG’s. 

    CJ, who has bipolar disorder, was supposed to get out of prison in September 2017—but he’s still locked up in the Green Haven unit in Stormville, according to the legal filing. He got a GED and vocational certificate during his time behind bars, and had hoped to get a job and rebuild a life for himself near his family in Orange County. Instead, he’s spent the past year-and-a-half in and out of barren psychiatric observation cells where he’s been put on suicide watch after repeatedly telling prison staff he’d rather die than stay in prison.

    MJ, who also has bipolar disorder, expected to get out in June 2018, according to court papers. Instead, he too was sent to Green Haven, where he’s been put in solitary twice for rules infractions—even though he shouldn’t be in prison to begin with.

    JR has depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress. He’s repeatedly attempted to harm himself, and he should already be out of prison—but he’s still at the Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon. Prison staff have already asked him to sign release papers and told him he’s considered a parolee instead of an inmate, even though he’s still in prison, the suit claims.

    DR, who has bipolar disorder, was slated for release in December 2017.

    Yet, he’s still being held at the Fishkill facility, the suit alleges. He proposed living with his aunt, but officials denied him and insisted that he must wait for community-based mental health housing to open up, according to the federal claim.

    It’s stories like these that prompted the legal advocates to file suit. They’re asking for class status; an order declaring the state’s actions unconstitutional; money for lawyers’ fees; and a permanent injunction forcing the state to make sufficient housing available and to come up with a better plan for mentally ill inmates in the future. 

    It’s not part of their requested relief but, as the suit notes: “Plaintiffs want to be free from prison.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Man Sues Prison For Addiction Medication Access

    Man Sues Prison For Addiction Medication Access

    The 30-year-old at the center of the suit started using painkillers as a teen and was prescribed Suboxone five years ago.

    Last week, the ACLU sued Maine’s prisons and one county jail over their continued refusal to give addiction medication to inmates.

    Zachary Smith, who is scheduled to go to prison in September, filed a federal lawsuit targeting the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Office and Maine Department of Corrections, claiming violations of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment and also of the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

    “Denying needed medication to people with opioid use disorders serves absolutely no good purpose, and actually undermines the important goal of keeping people off of opiates,” ACLU of Maine legal director Zachary Heiden said in a statement. “Going to prison shouldn’t be an automatic death sentence, but that is the chance we take when we cut prisoners off from adequate medical care.”

    Failure to provide medication can lead to painful forced withdrawal and increase the risk of overdose. 

    The 30-year-old at the center of the suit started using painkillers as a teen and was prescribed Suboxone five years ago. “If I did not get on buprenorphine I’d probably be dead,” he told the Bangor Daily News. 

    He was denied access to his medication last year during a short stint in the county jail. So, once he knew he had prison time in his future—a nine-month sentence for domestic assault—Smith and the ACLU wrote a letter to the state’s correctional system requesting that he continue to receive his medication behind bars.

    When they got no response, they filed suit.

    Although medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is considered the standard of care on the outside, many county jails and state prisons refuse to provide it. In Maine, according to the Bangor paper, only Knox County Jail provides Suboxone, though the Penobscot County Jail offers another alternative, the injectable treatment Vivitrol. 

    Prison officials declined to comment.

    “If we’re being sued, I can’t speak about that,” Maine Department of Corrections Commissioner Joseph Fitzpatrick told the Press Herald. “Once they’ve filed, I’m not able to comment.”

    Though the legal action could be ground-breaking for Maine prisoners, it’s not the first of its kind. In June, the ACLU of Washington launched a class-action suit against a jail there for denying inmates access to methadone and Suboxone as part of a policy the organization called “harmful, unwise and illegal.” 

    “The ADA prohibits singling out a group of people because of their disability and denying them access to medical services to which they would otherwise be entitled,” the organization wrote at the time. “The Whatcom County Jail has a policy of denying people with (opioid use disorder) the medication they need while providing necessary medication to everyone else, which is discrimination.” 

    Two months earlier, advocates in Massachusetts publicly pondered a lawsuit there, even as federal prosecutors announced an investigation into whether failure to provide addiction medications is a violation of the ADA. 

    View the original article at thefix.com