Alejandro v. Palm Beach State College
March 2011 | February 2012
A student brought this lawsuit against Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach, Florida, to enforce her right to take her psychiatric service dog on campus.
Bravo v. Board of Commissioners of Dona Ana County
June 2008 | April 2009
Filed in federal court in New Mexico, Bravo challenged the lack of mental health services and release planning in the county jail and discriminatory arrest practices by local law enforcement officers.
Jane Doe v. Hunter College
August 2004 | August 2006
This lawsuit was brought by a student who had been barred from her dormitory room at Hunter College because she was hospitalized after a suicide attempt.
J.A. v. Barbour
July 2007
Troubled teenage girls in a state-run reform school in Mississippi suffered “horrendous” physical and sexual abuse, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court on July 11, 2007. The complaint asked the court to require the state to provide federally required mental health and rehabilitative treatment to girls confined in the Columbia Training School.
Missouri P&A and Scaletty v. Carnahan
October 2004 | August 2007
This suit, originally filed as Prye v. Blunt, challenged Missouri's practice of denying the right to vote to people who are under court-ordered guardianship.
Nott v. George Washington University
October 2005
Jordan Nott was a straight-A sophomore at George Washington University in the fall of 2004 when he sought emergency psychiatric care for depression. When they learned of Nott’s hospitalization, university officials charged him with violating the school code of conduct, suspended him, evicted him from his dorm and threatened him with arrest for trespassing if he set foot on university property. The Bazelon Center filed a complaint on Nott's behalf in October 2005.
Pierce County v. Washington
February 2005
Caught in the vicious cycle that’s all too common across the U.S. today, hundreds of people with serious mental illnesses have been committed to this hospital for short-term interventions, then discharged to a community with inadequate resources to meet their needs, only to lapse into crisis and be recommitted to the hospital or taken to jail—over and over again.
Sampson v. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
June 2006 | March 2009
This lawsuit filed in federal district court charged that Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and one of its nurses, without justification, had five male guards forcibly strip a woman with a history of sexual abuse who had gone to the emergency room for treatment of migraine headaches. The hospital adopted new policies to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
William G. v. Pataki
October 2003 | November 2006
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of parolees with serious mental illnesses and substance abuse problems who are languishing in jail, waiting for state-funded treatment services to become available. State officials told them that they could be released for treatment, but not enough treatment facilities existed to help them.