D.C. Can’t Dismiss Lawsuit Over Police Response to Mental Health Crises

A federal judge ruled today that Washington, D.C. cannot dismiss a lawsuit alleging the district’s over-reliance on policing violates the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union of D.C. and the law firm Sheppard Mullin filed the lawsuit last year on behalf of Bread for the City, a local nonprofit that provides healthcare and social services to lower-income communities and unhoused people. According to the plaintiffs, the district sends police officers to 911 calls involving mental health crises instead of health professionals—a practice they say discriminates against people with mental health disabilities.

“It is a reasonable inference from Bread’s allegations that people with mental health disabilities do not meaningfully benefit from the district’s emergency response,” Judge Ana C. Reyes said during a Sep. 10 hearing denying the district’s request to dismiss the lawsuit. “For all those reasons, I conclude that Bread has plausibly alleged that individuals with mental health disabilities are denied the benefit of the district’s emergency response system.”

While the district sends trained health professionals like EMTs or paramedics to respond to physical health emergencies, the district fails to do the same for mental health emergencies, a practice that often leads to the person in crisis being harmed. Attorneys and advocates hope that the lawsuit will force the district to send mental health providers to mental health crises instead of police. 

“No one would call a police officer to treat a heart attack. But that’s what we do with mental health emergencies in D.C.,” Michael Perloff, staff attorney at ACLU-D.C., said in a press release. “Just as medical workers respond to physical crises, mental health workers should respond to mental health crises so that the District’s residents with disabilities get the appropriate and equal care they need.” 

DOJ investigations into police departments across the country, including Louisville, Minneapolis, and Phoenix, have determined cities violate the the ADA by sending armed police officers to respond to mental health calls, even when other options are available and no police response is necessary. 

When police respond to mental health crises instead of health professionals, the results are often deadly. Nationally, nearly 1 in 5 people fatally shot by police since 2015 were experiencing a mental health crisis when police killed them, according to The Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings. Since 2015, police have shot and killed more than 1,900 people experiencing mental health crises.

In a motion to dismiss the case, the district said people with mental health disabilities receive the same response to physical health emergencies that everyone in the district does. Attorneys for the district argued that expanding mental health emergency response would be a demand for new services, which is “a policy argument, not a legal claim.”

Judge Reyes said those arguments fell flat. Reyes noted that the district’s emergency response services already feature a program that sends behavioral health experts to 911 calls instead of police, albeit rarely, and therefore would not be a request to create new services.

“That program is available to all members of the public,” Reyes said. “Bread asserts that people with mental health disabilities are uniquely unable to access its benefits because of their disabilities.”

The ACLU and Sheppard Mullin filed a similar lawsuit in Washington County, Oregon in February on behalf of Disability Rights Oregon, a nonprofit advocacy group. The plaintiffs allege that Washington County and its 911 dispatch center fail to provide people with mental health disabilities equal access to the local emergency response system in violation of the ADA. That county has also attempted to dismiss the case, but it has not succeeded.

The Department of Justice has also weighed in on the D.C. case. In a statement of interest filed in February, attorneys for the DOJ said the ADA requires municipalities to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities so that they can access programs and services, including emergency response. The DOJ said the district’s emergency response program falls under the ADA and that the proposed changes would not constitute a request for new services.

“Less than 1% of 911 calls that primarily or exclusively involve mental health emergencies get a response from a mental health professional,” DOJ attorneys wrote in February, citing the plaintiff’s complaint. By contrast, “D.C. Fire and Medical is dispatched to approximately 90% of 911 calls primarily or exclusively concerning physical health emergencies.”

In the coming months, the plaintiffs and the district will share discovery materials and continue to meet for settlement conferences and mediations. The next court date is Oct. 30.

“We over-rely on police to address every problem in the community,” Ashika Verriest, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, said  in a press release. “Police officers are not the right people to respond to a mental health crisis, and we should not expect them to be. We need someone safe to call for all types of emergencies.”