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*************************************************************************** Plan to Join Us!! VOR 2006 Annual Meeting and Washington Initiative. See - http://vor.net/AnnualMeeting2006.html for complete details, including a registration form. *************************************************************************** VOR is the only national organization advocating for a full range of residential and support options for people with mental retardation, including Medicaid-certified Intermediate Care Facilities for the Mentally Retarded (ICFs/MR) and home and community-based care. VOR supports choice. *************************************************************************** ------------------------------------------- VOR Weekly E-Mail Update April 7, 2006 ------------------------------------------- ====================================================== LEGAL UPDATE 1. PENNSYLVANIA: Guardians' Wishes Trump State's Placement Plans, Federal Judge Rules - Pennsylvania Appeals Judge's Order 2. KENTUCKY: Judge accepts settlement for retarded; Foes sought delay, fear centers may close 3. CONNECTICUT: Ruling Raises Old Questions- End Of U.S. Oversight At Training School Shifts Onus Back To State 4. MASSACHUSETTS: Federal Court in Massachusetts issues ruling on EPSDT access 5. NEW YORK: Court Rules Guardian Can End Life Of Mentally Retarded Man 6. WASHINGTON, DC: Fenty Rebuffed in Obtaining Facts In Probe of D.C. Group Home Deaths- Mental Retardation Agency Demands Freedom of Information Request 7. CALIFORNIA: Family and Disabled Daughter: Head for US Supreme Court 8. MEMBERSHIP, CONTRIBUTION AND ANNUAL MEETING/INITIATIVE REGISTRATION FORM ====================================================== ----------------------------- 1. PENNSYLVANIA: Guardians' Wishes Trump State's Placement Plans, Federal Judge Rules - Pennsylvania Appeals Judge's Order -------------------- A federal district court judge in Pennsylvania has ruled that the state must abide by the decision of an institutional resident's legal guardian in determining whether the individual should be transferred to another facility or moved to the community. Commonwealth officials have appealed this and other portions of a January 30 ruling handed down by Federal District Court Judge Kim Gibson in a dispute involving the state's plan to close the Altoona Center, one of the six residential treatment facilities for persons with mental retardation operated by the state Department of Public Welfare (DPW). Background. The dispute arose after the department announced plans last year to close the 89-bed Altoona Center by placing most of the residents in appropriate community settings and moving the rest to Ebensburg Center, one of the state facilities that will remain in operation following the Altoona closure. A group of 59 parents and guardians of Altoona Center residents, however, filed suit in the US district court serving western Pennsylvania to block the Commonwealth from shutting down the facility. The plaintiffs in Alexander, et al. v. Rendell, et al. argued that the state's closure plans violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act as well as federal Medicaid law because the center constitutes the least restrictive treatment setting for the facility's residents. District Court Ruling. Judge Gibson rejected the plaintiffs' petition for a preliminary injunction and restraining order to prevent the closure of the Altoona Center, finding that the Department of Public Welfare has clear statutory authority to shut down state-operated facilities. However, in his implementing order, the judge specified that Altoona residents may be placed in community settings only if Commonwealth officials first obtain the written consent of the person's legal guardian; otherwise, such residents must be transferred to Ebensburg Center or another similar state facility. The judge also directed the state to grant any Altoona resident who is placed in the community the right to be admitted to a state-operated residential treatment center for a minimum of 18 months following the initial community placement. In early March, the Commonwealth defendants asked Judge Gibson to clarify his January 30 order, expressing concern that the order did not comport with the US Supreme Court's 1999 ruling in the Olmstead case or the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the Frederick L case. The defendants objected to granting guardians unfettered authority to veto community placements, even when the person prefers to live in a community setting and such a placement is considered to be the least restrictive option for the particular individual. The state defendants also pointed out that the practical effect of the order would be to preclude community placements for many Altoona residents. In a March 9 ruling, Judge Gibson rejected the defendants' arguments, noting that the Olmstead and Frederick L cases both involved plaintiffs who wanted to be moved to a community residence. "[T]he Altoona Center residents," he wrote," lack the mental capabilities to oppose or to seek any placement in a community-based care facility and that factor should not be used to force their removal from a state center for the mentally retarded." Instead, the final decision regarding where facility residents should be moved ". . . rests with the duly appointed guardian ... or those representatives of the residents whom the Defendants have recognized as the decision-maker for their respective resident." In his ruling, Judge Gibson makes it clear that DPW officials must comply with the decisions of such recognized decision-makers "... even if the resident has been evaluated and approved for a community placement setting. . ." The judge's March 9 ruling triggered requests from a group of disability organizations to be recognized as plaintiffs-interveners in the Alexander litigation. Among the organizations seeking to intervene are the Pennsylvania chapters of the American Association on Mental Retardation, the Autism National Committee and TASH, Pennsylvania Protection and Advocacy, Inc., The Arc of Pennsylvania, the National Coalition on Self-Determination, Speaking for Ourselves, a Pennsylvania-based self-advocacy organization, and Vision for Equality, Inc. Both the state defendants and the original plaintiffs in the suit have filed motions with the court opposing the recognition of the plaintiffs-interveners. Commonwealth's Appeal. On March 17, the state defendants notified that the plaintiffs that it had filed an appeal with the Third US Circuit Court of Appeal, challenging the legality of Judge Gibson's January 30 order as clarified by his March 9 ruling. --------------------------- 2. CONNECTICUT: Ruling Raises Old Questions- End Of U.S. Oversight At Training School Shifts Onus Back To State --------------------------- By Elizabeth Hamilton and Dave Altimari Hartford Courant March 28 2006 A judge's decision to end federal oversight of the state's sole large institution for the mentally retarded brings to a close a two-decade legal battle over conditions at Southbury Training School, but has revived questions about the future of the facility. In a 13-page ruling issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Ellen Bree Burns said Connecticut had drastically improved psychological, medical and physical therapy services to its 554 residents and has met all the requirements of a weighty consent decree. "Ten years ago, this court found systemic flaws at STS which placed residents at risk of great harm, even death," Burns wrote. "Today, residents of STS are safer and benefit from a state-of-the-art model of institutional care." In contrast to the conditions she found in 1996, Burns said, a consultant found "the medical staff at STS are extremely dedicated and well trained" delivering "high-quality medical services to a complex group of patients." The ruling also concludes the work of the federal court monitor - called a "special master" - who has been overseeing the state's compliance since 1996, when Connecticut was found in contempt of a federal consent decree. The case began in 1985, when the U.S. Department of Justice sued Connecticut over deplorable conditions at Southbury Training School. State officials on Monday reacted with relief to the ruling. "This is very good news and is a reflection of the dramatic progress our state has made in the treatment of the residents at Southbury Training School," Gov. M. Jodi Rell said in a prepared statement. "The court, in the end, has fully recognized the dedication and commitment [of staff and administrators of STS]. The order is a tribute to their hard work." Still before the court - and possibly the legislature - is the question of what happens now that the state has poured resources into improving a facility that halted admissions in 1986 following the consent decree. The result of the admissions moratorium has been a dwindling, aging population - the average resident is 59 years old and has lived in the institution for 44 years - living in what is now a state-of-the-art facility. Lawmakers, who passed a state law that barred the school from accepting new residents, could reconsider that decision in light of last week's federal ruling. More immediate, however, is a class-action lawsuit still before Burns that reopens the question of whether the facility should be shut down. That lawsuit, brought by advocates for the mentally retarded in 1993, accuses the state of violating the rights of Southbury Training School residents by failing to move them into the community. The lawsuit, which went to trial for nine months in 1999, was left undecided by Burns while Southbury Training School was under federal oversight. Advocates who brought that lawsuit said Monday that they hoped Burns would consider their case seriously now that the other case was resolved. "Right now it might be relatively good at Southbury, as institutions go, but when people say something is a `good institution' that's really an oxymoron to me," said Margaret Dignoti, executive director of the Association for Retarded Citizens of Connecticut. "Because even though the care might be decent, they are still denying the resident the freedom they would have in a community setting. It saddens me deeply." The commissioner of the state Department of Mental Retardation, Peter O'Meara, declined to be interviewed about Southbury Training School Monday, so it is unclear what the department's plans are for the facility. Attorney David Shaw, who filed the 1978 class action lawsuit that resulted in the closing of Mansfield Training School in 1993, said Connecticut made a "conscious decision" in the 1990s to keep Southbury open, despite evidence from the Mansfield case that even an aging population benefits greatly from living in the community. "We believe that we as a society make a very powerful statement about this population when we put them in an institution when they're 5 or 6 years old and keep them there their entire lives," Shaw said. "These institutions are throwbacks." But state Rep. Arthur O'Neill, R-Southbury, said the state should consider reopening admissions to Southbury Training School for the geriatric, mentally retarded population. "We have an asset, not so much the buildings or the land, but the workforce, which has learned through their own hard experience how to care for people in this population," O'Neill said. "I think we should try to preserve that asset, which is that workforce with all this skill and knowledge." In 1993-94 O'Neill served as chairman of the Southbury Training School Task Force, which rejected as unrealistic Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr.'s proposal to close the Southbury Training School. O'Neill said the committee determined that the expense and time required to close the facility had been greatly underestimated. He does not believe Burns will order the training school closed now, either. "For the judge to say this is a world-class institution, and now we're going to shut it down?" O'Neill said. "It seems kind of contradictory, but you never know." Burns' order Friday also lays to rest a recent controversy over the role of the special master in the case, David Ferleger. Since taking the part-time post in 1997, Ferleger has received about $3 million in state payments, though it is unclear how much of the amount is his own compensation and how much is staff and office expenses. He has been charging the state $260 an hour. Rell pushed for Ferleger's ouster as a special master last November when it was determined that Ferleger's law license had been suspended for a year in Pennsylvania, where he is based, for failing to adhere to a mandatory training schedule in 1997. Burns denied the state's motion to have Ferleger removed after determining that a law license is not required to be a special master in federal court. In her ruling, she praised his work on the Southbury case by saying he had "rendered a great public service." --------------------- 3. KENTUCKY: Judge accepts settlement for retarded; Foes sought delay, fear centers may close -------------------- Summary: In late March, Federal Court Judge Joseph Hood ruled in favor of a Settlement Agreement that families and others fear will lead to the closure of every ICF/MR in Kentucky. Wrote one parent, "If you go strictly by the Agreement language, every unfilled, downsized, and community-transferred ICF/MR bed in the state is now a source of funding for (only) a community placement." At the fairness hearing, the courtroom was filled with parents. Parents from state operated facilities Oakwood, Hazelwood, and Central State, along with representatives from the Council on Mental Retardation were also present at the hearing to show their opposition. Families are considering a legal challenge to the settlement agreement. Judge accepts settlement for retarded; Foes sought delay, fear centers may close The Courier-Journal By Deborah Yetter March 29, 2006 Rejecting a requested delay, a federal judge yesterday finalized an agreement intended to help mentally retarded Kentuckians live independently. The ruling was a victory for the plaintiffs in a 2002 lawsuit brought on behalf of about 2,600 mentally retarded adults on a waiting list for help for such services as home health, therapy and adult day care. The ruling requires the state Medicaid program to expand services to those on the waiting list. The families of some mentally retarded adults had asked U.S. District Judge Joseph Hood to delay the agreement ending a class-action lawsuit against the state for fear it would lead to closing four residential centers. But Hood turned them down, saying, "I'm not delaying justice." State officials have said there are no plans to close the centers. "I think it's wonderful," said Barbara Renfro, whose son Jonathon Jones, 26, was one of the plaintiffs in the suit filed by Kentucky Protection and Advocacy, a watchdog group. State Medicaid Commissioner Shannon Turner said she also was pleased that Hood accepted the agreement. But the ruling disappointed more than 100 people who filled the federal courtroom. "It looks like we didn't get anywhere," said Gary Latham of Hopkinsville, whose son lives at Communities at Oakwood in Somerset, the state's largest center for mentally retarded adults. The families of about 500 residents at Oakwood, Hazelwood Center and the Bingham Unit in Louisville, and Outwood in Dawson Springs went to court last week to try to block the agreement. Bob Heleringer, one of their lawyers, said the families applaud the intent of the agreement -- to provide about $230 million in expanded services at home or in the community for mentally retarded adults over the next several years. But he said they object to a few provisions that they believe could cause the state to close facilities -- including a requirement that the state not "backfill" beds when a resident leaves to live in the community. "If they close the beds when they leave, slowly but surely there will be no more beds," said Elbirda Haley, 73, of Louisville, whose son lives in a group home Hazelwood operates. Heleringer said the families he represents won't give up. "We can and will file a lawsuit challenging this," he told the disappointed family members. Turner said she believes the families that sought the delay have nothing to worry about. While the state may reduce the size of some of the centers, she said, it doesn't plan to close them. "Our goal is to keep the facilities the right size to meet the needs," she said. Maureen Fitzgerald, director of Kentucky Protection and Advocacy, said she was glad Hood didn't allow further delay. "I think a lot of people are going to be really happy to get services they've been waiting for years,'' she said. ---------------------------------- 4. MASSACHUSETTS: Federal Court in Massachusetts issues ruling on EPSDT access ---------------------------------- Summary: A Federal court in Massachusetts has ruled that the Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment (EPSDT) Services provisions of Medicaid require Massachusetts to provide Medicaid-eligible children with any services deemed medically necessary, whether or not the service is currently part of the Medicaid state plan. While the decision applies only to Massachusetts, it may prove to have national ramifications if treated as a precedent in other cases around the country. Rosie D. v. Romney is a class action lawsuit that was brought under the EPSDT provisions of the Medicaid Act to compel Massachusetts to provide intensive home-based mental health services that will enable children with severe emotional disturbance (SED) to receive treatment and support in their homes and home communities. The plaintiffs include eight named children and a class of over 15,000 other Medicaid recipients throughout the Commonwealth with serious psychiatric and emotional disabilities. The defendants are Governor Mitt Romney; the Secretary of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services; the Secretary of the Executive Office of Administration and Finance; and the director of the Massachusetts Office of Medicaid. Attorneys from the Center for Public Representation, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, LLP, and the Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee represent the plaintiffs. After extensive discovery that included over fifty depositions and 200,000 pages of documents, U.S. District Court Judge Michael A. Ponsor presided over a six-week trial in May-June 2005. The parties presented 45 witnesses and introduced over 500 exhibits. Sixteen experts, plus family members, providers, and treating clinicians testified for the plaintiffs about the effectiveness of intensive home-based services, the state's failure to provide these services, the thousands of children who need these services, and the harm to the children who are denied this treatment. On January 26, 2006, in a landmark decision with national implications, Judge Michael A. Ponsor issued a 98 page decision finding that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is violating the federal Medicaid Act by failing to provide home-based mental health services to an estimated 15,000 children with serious emotional disturbance. "The result of this failure is that thousands of Massachusetts children with serious emotional disabilities are forced to endure unnecessary confinement in residential facilities or to remain in costly institutions far longer than their medical conditions require." The judge called the state's efforts to comply with the requirements of the federal law "woefully inadequate, with detrimental consequences to thousands of vulnerable children." He added, "(The) defendants' failure to provide adequate assessments, service coordination and home-based supportive services for Medicaid-eligible children with serious emotional disturbances was glaring from the evidence and at times, shocking in its consequence." ---------------------- 5. NEW YORK: Court Rules Guardian Can End Life Of Mentally Retarded Man --------------------- 3-26-06 2006 North Country Gazette http://www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/decisions/mar06/47opn06.pdf ALBANY---The state's highest court has decided that guardians appointed after the March, 2003 implementation date of the Health Care Decisions Act for Mentally Retarded Persons can decide to end the life of their ward by removing life-sustaining medical treatment. In a decision written by Judge Victoria Graffeo, the Court of Appeals held that the legislative act grants all guardians of the mentally incapacitated, regardless of when they were appointed guardians, full health care decision making authority and as such, they can choose to end the life of their ward. Under New York common law, a competent adult generally has the right to make health care decisions, including the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment. If the individual suffers an illness or injury resulting in a loss of decision-making capacity, family and friends may obtain a court order authorizing cessation of treatment if they can prove---by clear and convincing evidence---of the patient's previously expressed views that the individual would have refused life-sustaining treatment if capable of making that decision. In addition to the rights recognized under the common law, a competent adult can relieve family and friends of the burden of seeking such a court order by executing a health care proxy naming a surrogate health care decision maker who can make binding decisions in the event the appointing adult loses the capacity to make such decisions. A person can also express his or her wishes regarding life-sustaining treatment in what is known as a living will. The common law did not address the case of mentally retarded persons who had never been competent to make their own health care decisions and for whom life-sustaining treatment could not be refused. When these mentally retarded individuals became irreversibly, terminally ill they were, in effect, ineligible for hospice or other palliative care because their guardians were unable to refuse more intrusive, acute medical treatments aimed at extending life for as long as possible. As a consequence of this disparity, family members, care givers and advocacy groups for the mentally retarded sought legislation giving them the power to make such decisions and the 2003 law was enacted. The case before the court involved a man identified as "R.B" in court documents who became the guardian for his 42-year-old mentally retarded brother, "M.B", in January, 2003, before the new law was enacted, after their mother died. M.B., who had Downs Syndrome, was placed on a respirator in a Staten Island Hospital in October, 2003, given nutrition and hydration by a gastric feeding tube after suffering pneumonia hypertension. He was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state and on Oct. 14, 2003, his brother requested that all life sustaining medical treatment be withdrawn. On Oct. 23, 2004, the Richmond County Surrogate's Court ruled that R.B. was legally empowered to make that decision and M.B. was removed from the respirator. He died a few hours later. The state Appellate Division reversed the lower court's decision with a 3-1 vote after M.B. had died, saying that R.B. did not have the authority to order the removal of treatment for his brother. The Mental Hygiene Legal Service, presenting R.B. asked the Court of Appeals to review the matter and action which had been brought by the Staten Island Developmental Disabilities Service Office and the court granted permission. The Court held that the Health Care Decisions Act is also applicable to guardians appointed before March, 2003, reversed the Appellate Divisions decision and reinstated the surrogate's court order. --------------------------------- 6. WASHINGTON, DC: Fenty Rebuffed in Obtaining Facts In Probe of D.C. Group Home Deaths -- Mental Retardation Agency Demands Freedom of Information Request --------------------------------- Summary: A Washington, DC Councilman was asked to file a Freedom of Information request when he inquired about how DC investigates deaths in group homes for people with mental retardation. The District is facing a new round of criticism about poor care of mentally retarded people who live in city-contracted group homes. In November, the court monitor in a long-standing class-action lawsuit against the D.C. government found that a pattern of neglect led to four deaths in the past year. The federal judge in the case has warned that the District is running out of time to show improvement in services for its most vulnerable citizens. By Karlyn Barker The Washington Post March 12, 2006 A D.C. Council committee chairman who wants to know more about a panel investigating deaths in group homes for the mentally disabled got this reply: File a Freedom of Information Act request. Council member Adrian M. Fenty, the Ward 4 representative and Democratic mayoral hopeful, is a tad ticked off. He had hoped for a much quicker response from the administration of Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D). A FOIA request can take weeks or months, with no guarantee of getting the information. "We just asked a couple of simple questions about how the fatality review committee operates, and we were told to file a FOIA," said Fenty, chairman of the council's Human Services Committee. "How much bureaucracy does the government want to put as a barrier to this council and the public?" The District is facing a new round of criticism about poor care of mentally retarded people who live in city-contracted group homes. In November, the court monitor in a long-standing class-action lawsuit against the D.C. government found that a pattern of neglect led to four deaths in the past year. The federal judge in the case has warned that the District is running out of time to show improvement in services for its most vulnerable citizens. The Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Administration's fatality review committee was created by Williams after a series of articles in The Washington Post in 1999 revealed 350 documented cases of abuse and neglect, as well as profiteering, in the group homes. The series found that none of the 116 deaths since 1993 had been investigated. The committee has 11 members, seven from the government and four from the public. The court monitor, Elizabeth Jones, told Fenty during an oversight hearing last week that she observed two fatality review panel meetings and that one egregious case of neglect "brought the medical examiner almost out of her chair." Jones expressed concern that the meetings are dominated by the government members, with scant participation by the panel's appointees from the public, a situation that Fenty said means "the fox is guarding the henhouse." Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3) said it was wrong for Williams's administration to withhold information about fatalities among the disabled. She called it a matter of confidentiality vs. accountability. "The executive branch has demonstrated a real unwillingness to be forthcoming about information on harm" to group home residents, Patterson said during the hearing. "What exactly happened? Who did what, when and where? There needs to be greater transparency." Fenty's committee posed 32 written questions to the Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Administration in advance of last week's hearing. Agency officials answered 28 of the queries but balked at providing what they said was confidential information about the fatality review panel. The committee asked the agency for a copy of any final report from the panel since Sept. 30; copies of its recommendations and whether the agency and group home contractors followed them; and the number of times government and public members of the panel attended or missed meetings. Charlotte Brookins-Hudson, the council's general counsel, said it was unprecedented for a council member to have to file a FOIA request to get information from a D.C. agency. "I've never heard of such a thing," she said and noted that the council has subpoena powers. In June 2000, the mayor told the council that his then-new administration would share information about group home operations -- and that there would be "no need" for FOIA requests. "The press has a role to play in this," Williams testified at a council hearing at the time. "Everyone under my guidance is under the instruction that there's no need for a Freedom of Information suit. That information ought to be readily available." The fatality review committee is chaired by the D.C. medical examiner and by Marsha Thompson, interim administrator of the mental retardation agency. Thompson said at the hearing last week that she wanted to give Fenty the information but was told she could not. She did not return calls seeking the name of the official who barred her from releasing the information. Patterson said the executive branch is misinterpreting and misusing the FOIA statute to deny access to public information. She and Fenty said they will draft legislation to make the law on releasing materials from the mental retardation fatality review panel the same as legislative amendments Patterson introduced to make records available from the D.C. committee that reviews children's deaths. Joseph Cammarata, a lawyer who has represented families whose mentally disabled relatives were neglected, abused or died in city-run group homes, accused Williams of doing "a complete about-face" from his position in 2000. "He's playing hide-and-seek with information that's vital to the health and well-being of the developmentally disabled," Cammarata said. "It's critical that information that goes to the heart of how these group homes are run and what underlies the systemic neglect of these innocent people not be held from public view." In January, after protracted negotiations to obtain copies of group home death investigations conducted in recent years, The Post filed suit to get the records. The newspaper asked for the reports with the names of the deceased deleted. District officials, citing the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the mayor's order creating the review panel, continued to express concerns about privacy. ----------------------- 7. CALIFORNIA: Family and Disabled Daughter: Head for US Supreme Court ----------------------- Summary: For Immediate Release: Adult disabled child removed from parents' care, confined illegally and subsequently injured while in state care. Parents denied right to represent her in suit against her state conservators. Washington, DC (PRWEB). February 28, 2006 -- The parents of an 35-year old adult autistic woman have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in a Ninth circuit civil rights lawsuit that denied them the right to represent their daughter. Their attorney, Gerard Wallace, stated, "The courts are saying that challenges to the legality of Nancy's removal and confinement can only be pursued by those who are confining her. This is the same as saying that only the jailors of criminal defendants can challenge the legality of their arrests and prosecutions. Barring the natural guardians of disabled persons from representing them in suits against their jailors means that the disabled have no where to turn for help." The Golin case raises issues similar to Anna Nicole Smith's case, Marshall v. Marshall (04-1544). Both involve the scope of the "probate exception" that would arguably prevent federal jurisdictional matters related to state probate matters from being heard by federal courts. Like the Smith case, the Ninth Circuit raised in part similar issues to deny the Golins a hearing in federal court on their civil rights issues. The Golins raised and cared for their only child Nancy at home since birth until late 2001, when she was taken from her family by local police in Palo Alto, California. She had wandered away from her family one evening, returning happy and unharmed the next morning. Police put her in the psychiatric ward of Stanford hospital, rebuffing her parents. The Golins contend this constituted a wholesale denial of her 4th and 14th Amendment right to freedom from unreasonable seizure, as there was no warrant or emergency. Two weeks later, a local court told the state they had no authority to hold her because she was merely autistic. Despite this they defied the laws, hiding her away. Nancy has never been allowed to go home again. To keep her, parents showed the state sought the help of the local DA to charge the parents with some kind of criminal offense. After the parents protested to local media, police briefly locked them up, then later dismissed charges. When the state was finally appointed conservator over her parents' objections, the procedures misapplied four statutory frameworks protecting developmentally disabled citizens. This, despite the parents' showing that Nancy has been raped, drugged, received fractures, denied emergency medical care and subjected to life threatening conditions in State custody. The Golins are still only ermitted to visit their daughter under approved supervision, even though the State admits their relationship is close and loving. The Golins sued the state and county in 2003 in United States Federal District Court on a Section 1983 and 1985 civil rights lawsuit (Golin v. Allenby et al, NDCal 03-04752). The suit, on their own and their daughter's behalf, was for injuries, conspiracy, malicious prosecution and wrongful confinement, among other claims. This escalated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit where in June of this year the Golins were again denied standing (Golin v. Allenby et al, 04- 15900). The parents also appealed directly to Gov. Schwarzenegger and their State Senator, Jeff Denham, to no avail. The District Court ruled that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction, since now only the State had standing to seek redress on Nancy's behalf, because the state appointed itself her conservator, despite the fact that the state would then be both plaintiff and defendant. --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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