(Photo by Kavith Cardoza)

A number of disability advocacy organizations, along with the law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel, have filed suit against the District of Columbia for what they say is a failure to adequately address the needs of young people struggling with serious mental health disorders.

The class action suit was filed Tuesday in the D.C. Superior Court on behalf of two anonymous young people. It alleges that the District does not provide adequate community-based mental health services to children suffering from mental illness, leading to unnecessary institutionalization in hospitals and in the criminal justice system.

At issue are three laws: the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Medicaid act, according to Alice Abrokwa, an attorney for the National Center for Youth Law, one of the organizations involved in the suit. Abrokwa argues the District is violating these laws, which require that states provide mental health care in the community, enabling troubled children to avoid institutionalization.

“The District offers a limited array of mental health services that just aren’t intensive enough or consistent enough to come close to meeting the level of need of children with serious mental health disabilities,” Abrokwa says. “Because of that, children are cycled in and out of psychiatric institutions, hospitals, and jails.”

The plaintiffs in the suit, which was first reported by the Washington Post, include a 14-year-old girl, identified as M.J., who has been hospitalized at least four times in the last four years. M.J. has been diagnosed with a range of mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2016, she was arrested for assaulting her mother, according to the complaint, and she’s often had to switch schools because of consistent problems and suspensions. The suit contends that M.J. has not received long-term, community-based services in D.C.

L.R., the other anonymous plaintiff, is a 17-year-old girl currently institutionalized in a facility in D.C. She has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, PTSD, ADHD, and conduct disorder. L.R. has been hospitalized at least five times and arrested for fighting. The suit holds that she also has not received specialized community care in the District.

The suit alleges that M.J. and L.R. qualify for such care under the ADA by virtue of having a mental health disability, defined by D.C. law as a “serious emotional disturbance.”

Both of the plaintiffs, and the class they represent, “suffer dramatically curtailed life opportunities” because of the lack of resources being given them, according to the complaint.

The suit is brought on behalf of a class, defined as “all Medicaid eligible District of Columbia children who now or in the future are under the age of 21, have a mental health disability, are not receiving medically necessary intensive community-based services, and are unnecessarily institutionalized or at serious risk of institutionalization.” The complaint estimates that it applies to hundreds of children living in D.C.

The suit also contends that D.C. has known about its failure to provide intensive community care, and has not remediated it.

“The District has known about these problems for years, and despite years of advocacy has not developed a system that identifies the children who need intensive community-based services, and then provides the services to the children and families who need them,” says Howard Schiffman, a Schulte Roth & Zabel litigation partner overseeing the firm’s effort in the case, via email. “Unfortunately resorting to litigation was necessary to bring about that change.”

The suit names Mayor Muriel Bowser; Tanya A. Royster, the director of the D.C. Department of Behavioral Health; Wayne Turnage, the director of the D.C. Department of Health Care Finance; and the city of D.C.

Both the office of the mayor and the office of the Attorney General declined to comment on pending litigation.

This story has been updated to amend the name of Schulte, Roth & Zabel law firm, and the fact that it is not based in D.C.