Opinion ID: 2827979
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The District Owed a Duty to Suggs

Text: In Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307 (1982), the Supreme Court held that the State has an affirmative duty to ensure the safety and general well-being of an involuntarily committed mental patient. Id. at 315–16. This affirmative duty includes the duty to provide necessary medical care. See Harris, 932 F.2d at 14. The District involuntarily committed Suggs to its care, and thus, under Youngberg, entered into a special relationship with Suggs. Under the District’s revised statutory scheme governing the commitment of intellectually disabled individuals, a parent or guardian of an intellectually disabled individual may file a petition with the superior court to have the individual “committed to a facility.” D.C. Code § 6-1924 (1978). Under that statute, “commitment” means the “placement in a facility, pursuant to a court order, of an individual who is at least moderately mentally retarded at the request of the individual’s parent or guardian without the 12 consent of the individual.” D.C. Code § 6-1902(4) (1978) (emphasis added). The District does not dispute that Suggs was involuntarily committed to its care, or that it owed an affirmative duty to Suggs while he resided at Forest Haven. See District’s Br. 32–33 (acknowledging mental patients are entitled to substantive due process rights when confined to a “state institution”); Evans v. Washington, 459 F. Supp. 483, 484 (D.D.C. 1978) (entering into consent order stipulating that the “residents of Forest Haven . . . have a federal constitutional right to habilitative care and treatment based upon the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment”). Rather, the District argues that once Suggs left Forest Haven and moved into a private home, it was no longer in a special relationship with him. It argues that while living in the group home operated by Symbral, Suggs was in the “least restrictive conditions necessary to achieve the purposes of habilitation,” D.C. Code § 7-1305.03, such that it no longer deprived Suggs of his liberty in a manner giving rise to a special relationship. We disagree. Suggs’s circumstance parallels the situation we addressed in Smith v. District of Columbia, 413 F.3d 86 (D.C. Cir. 2005). In Smith, we considered whether the District owed a heightened obligation toward a juvenile delinquent whom the District had placed with a private company that operated “independent living” programs for delinquent youth. Id. at 89–90. The District insisted it owed no obligation to the juvenile because his “liberty was unconstricted”: subject to program rules, he could “come and go” and “take [programapproved] weekend home visits.” Id. at 94. We rejected this argument, noting that “such flexibility hardly amounts to freedom from state restraints.” Id. We held that, even if the juvenile was subject only to the “lesser” of several restrictive 13 options, he was still being held “against his will,” and the District had a heightened duty to assume some responsibility for his well-being. Id. at 94–95. Similarly, the fact that Suggs was held in the least restrictive setting does not negate the involuntary nature of his commitment or the District’s duty under Youngberg to ensure he received adequate medical care. See DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 199–200 (“[W]hen the State takes a person into its custody and holds him there against his will, the Constitution imposes upon it a corresponding duty to assume some responsibility for his safety and general well-being.”).