Not everyone is pleased with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bold plan to leverage the court system to connect severely mentally individuals to treatment, and on Thursday, Jan. 26, a coalition of civil and disability rights organizations took their complaints over CARE Court to the California Supreme Court.
Disability Rights California, Western Center on Law & Poverty and The Public Interest Law Project filed a petition for writ of mandate that challenges the constitutional validity of CARE Court.
“The CARE Act strips people of basic civil liberties guaranteed by the California Constitution, including the right to due process, equal protection and the right to make decisions about one’s own life, healthcare and housing,” said Sarah Gregory, an attorney with Disability Rights California, in a Thursday press conference.
Newsom has said that CARE Court will protect people’s rights and will not force medication or treatment upon them against their will.
The California Supreme Court now has 90 days to accept or deny the petition, and with CARE Court implementation set to begin in seven counties on Oct. 1, the clock is ticking for opponents to make their case.
The pressure to tackle the twin crises of mental health and homelessness is also mounting as this week Los Angeles County undertakes an annual count of its unhoused population and seeks to quantify the prevalence of mental illness during this mammoth annual survey of the homeless.
CARE Court is a program that empowers or compels – depending on who you ask – individuals with severe mental illness to access treatment, medication and housing. It is geared toward people with untreated schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other psychotic disorders and seeks to prevent them from returning to, or winding up, behind bars or on the streets.
The coalition of opponents have several complaints about CARE Court in addition to their fundamental fear that court-mandated treatment will impinge on people’s civil rights.
The coalition says the CARE Act was passed too quickly, without adequate stakeholder consultation, and worries that the program will disproportionately impact people of color who make up the majority of the state’s homeless.
In addition, petitioners say there are not enough housing resources and community-based mental health services to serve those who appear in CARE Court, and they argue that the state should focus its attention and investment on providing more housing and community mental health services.
“When people are told that they have to go to court to get what they should be getting voluntarily in the community and then they get a care plan that subjugates them to going to services that still do not meet their cultural needs, that is not compassion, that is not care, that is not helping people,” said Keris Jän Myrick, a Los Angeles resident with schizophrenia, at the press conference.
SB 1338 — also known as The CARE Act — was passed in September 2022 and all counties are required to establish their own courts by Oct. 1, 2024. Earlier this month, the Governor announced that Los Angeles would join the initial cohort of counties implementing CARE Court in 2023 with a targeted Jan. 1 start date.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. County Supervisors Janice Hahn, Hilda Solis and Kathryn Barger have expressed their support for the program and the accelerated implementation timeline.
“It is profoundly inhumane to allow people to suffer mental illness and die on our streets,” said Bass in a Jan. 13 statement. “We will lock arms with Los Angeles County, building CARE Courts and expanding mental health and substance abuse programs to help Angelenos get well while respecting all civil liberties.”
State Sen. Tom Umberg, one of the authors of SB 1338, said in a Jan. 19 interview that per California law, CARE Court cannot force anyone to take medication or complete treatment against their will.
And, he added, while some people can be referred to CARE Court from misdemeanor proceedings, CARE Court is housed within the civil court system and cannot enforce any criminal sentences or revert people back to misdemeanor proceedings if they fail to comply with their plan.
State Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, the co-author of SB 1338, pointed out in a Jan. 23 interview that the goal of CARE Court is to address a person’s mental health needs before they end up in a more restrictive setting.
“I think the goal of CARE Court is to provide care at the level that a person needs, with the optimum being the lowest level of care possible,” said Eggman. “This is more of an upstream intervention that tries to keep people from prison, and being conserved.”
The only consequence if an individual fails to comply with a treatment plan is a potential referral to conservatorship proceedings. Conservatorships are notoriously difficult to establish and in order to do so the court must meet the high bar of proving someone is gravely disabled – meaning they are unable to provide for their basic food, clothing and shelter needs due to mental illness.
Nevertheless, opponents believe that this threat is significant enough to make CARE Court coercive.
“How can something be voluntary when there are consequences for not following through with your care plan; when someone decides where you live, what medical treatment you should have and this noncompliance could result in referral to conservatorship?” said Kelechi Ubozoah, a mental health advocate and suicide survivor based in Alameda County, at the press conference.
The petitioners stand firm in their opposition to CARE Court. Gregory said they will “consider all options depending on what the Supreme Court decides” including possibly refiling in lower courts if the California Supreme Court declines to hear their petition.
