Disability Rights California v. County of Alameda

July 31, 2020
DREDF and co-counsel Disability Rights California (DRC), Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho, and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of DRC and its constituents with serious mental health disabilities against Alameda County and Alameda Health System. The lawsuit challenges the County’s failures to provide adequate community-based services to people with serious mental health disabilities causing unnecessarily cycling through the County’s locked facilities, including the John George Psychiatric Hospital and the Santa Rita Jail. The complaint details how Black people with serious mental health disabilities are harmed at staggeringly high rates by Alameda County’s failures to provide intensive and appropriate community-based services. The lawsuit seeks increased linkages and access to community-based services and decreased reliance on institutionalization. [...]

Lawsuit Filed Against Alameda County for Its Failed Mental Health System

July 30, 2020
(Oakland, CA) Today, Disability Rights California (DRC), along with Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, and the Oakland-based law firm Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho filed a federal lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) against Alameda County and Alameda Health System. The lawsuit challenges the unnecessary and illegal segregation of people with mental health disabilities — especially Black people with disabilities — in psychiatric institutions and the failure to ensure people with disabilities are provided the services they need. [...]

Stop Blaming Gun Violence on Mental Illness

August 7, 2019
We grieve with all those harmed by recent mass shootings in Dayton, El Paso, and Gilroy. 

DREDF unequivocally rejects attempts to scapegoat mental illness in all areas – including gun violence – and stands in solidarity with our friends, colleagues, and allies who seek real, effective policy solutions to racism, xenophobia, mental health stigma, and mass murder.

DREDF Comments on Proposed Rule Concerning Medicaid

June 11, 2015
DREDF comments on proposed rule concerning Medicaid, Children's Health Insurance Programs; Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008; the Application of Mental Health Parity Requirements to Coverage Offered by Medicaid Managed Care Organizations, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Alternative Benefit Plans, RIN 0938-AS24.

Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (H.R. 3717)

January 28, 2014
DREDF joined with other members of the Consortium of Citizens with Disabilities to oppose the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (H.R. 3717). While the bill purports to aid families of individuals with serious mental health conditions, it actually contains numerous provisions that would eliminate significant and necessary protections for these individuals.

Davis et al. v. Department of Health and Human Services et al.

July 11, 2000
Individual plaintiffs and the Independent Living Resource Center of San Francisco (ILRCSF) sued the City and County of San Francisco, California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHS), California Department of Health Services (DHS), California Department of Social Services (DSS), California Department of Mental Health (DMH) and the California Department of Aging (DOA) alleging violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Nursing Home Reform Act and other statutes. Specifically, defendants failed to assess or provide support to residents of Laguna Honda Hospital that would have enabled them to live in a home of their choice outside of LHH.

Sanchez v. Johnson

May 4, 2000
The lawsuit challenged the State's failure to increase wages of direct care workers for persons with disabilities residing in the community, resulting in turnover in excess of 50 percent a year. California had increased rates paid to community providers for wages insubstantially since 1989. As a result, workers in community facilities are paid 54 percent of what similar workers in California's institutions are paid. Only two states in the nation paid less per person than California for Medicaid Home and Community Based Services.