Opinion ID: 2631631
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Importance of countervailing state interests

Text: API argues that medicating Myers would serve two compelling state interests: it would prevent Myers from harming herself or others, and would ameliorate Myers's condition. These interests, API argues, find legitimate sources in two traditional state powers: the state's police power and its parens patriae duty. [73]
API argues that the state's police power is implicated here because the superior court found that Myers was a danger to herself and others. Just as citizens have a right to some protection from the state, API argues, the state has a legitimate and compelling interest in the physical safety of its citizens. In API's view, this interest is sufficient to overcome a patient's right to refuse psychotropic medication. In an emergency situation, API might be correct. Indeed, the Supreme Court of Ohio has so held, ruling that the police power can justify medication when the state perceives an imminent threat of harm. [74] But that is not the situation here. As already mentioned, this case centers on the use of psychotropic medication in non-emergency situations. [75] And API has not maintained that Myers posed an imminent threat of harm to herself or anyone else after she was committed for treatment at API. In these circumstances, the state's power of civil commitment sufficed to meet its police-power interest, so we fail to see how the issue of medication implicates the state's police power at all: If there is no emergency, hospital personnel are in no danger; the only purpose of forcible medication in these circumstances would be to help the patient. But the basic premise of the right to privacy is the freedom to decide whether we prefer to be helped, or to be left alone.[ [76] ] Indeed, it seems noteworthy that the statutory provision that governs petitions to administer psychotropics in non-emergency situations makes no mention of the police power, and does not require a treatment facility to make any showing of institutional risk or danger to others as a condition for authorizing treatment. [77] The applicable statutes allow medication to be authorized without any findingjudicial or medical that the patient poses a danger. [78] The state's police powerits power to protect others from Myersthus provides no justification, compelling or otherwise, for API to override Myers's choice to accept or refuse psychotropic medication.
API proposes a second compelling interest: the state's parens patriae obligationits duty to protect Myers from herself. The doctrine of parens patriae refers to the inherent power and authority of the state to protect the person and property of an individual who lack[s] legal age or capacity. [79] Because the superior court found Myers incapable of making informed decisions about her mental illness, API reasons that the state must be permitted to make those decisions for her. [80] We readily agree that the state's parens patriae obligation does give it a compelling interest in administering psychotropic medication to unwilling mental patients in some situations. [81] But this simply raises the difficult question: does the current statutory scheme use an overly intrusive means to attain the state's interest by failing to require an independent judicial determination of the patient's best interests? To answer this question, we turn to the third step of the constitutional balancing test, the least intrusive alternative requirement.