rebuffing constitutional challenge to group living arrangements at state hospital
How later courts described this case
- rebuffing constitutional challenge to group living arrangements at state hospital
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
Although the Court’s opinion reads well, I cannot join the majority’s conclusion that conditions at State Hospital South are not harmful to patients, believing the record reads to the contrary. The majority states: “We note first that the record contains no facts indicating that the conditions of confinement at State Hospital South are in any way harmful to any of the patients.” P. 305. The following is a list of the conditions which the majority finds are “not harmful”: patients are forced to sleep in dormitory style rooms containing up to 17 other patients; allotted sleeping space is 80 square feet; many of the patients spend the days in rooms with up to 40 other mentally disabled patients; the hospital is admittedly understaffed by ten percent causing the closure of one building which forced patients to move to the remaining *905 buildings worsening the overcrowded conditions; patient security has been reduced; and treatment for some individuals does not exist. (R., Vol. 2, pp. 6, 22; Vol. 1, pp. 19, 24, 28, 51, 60; Appellant’s Brief, pp. 8-11.)
How these conditions are not in any way harmful to the patients at State Hospital South escapes the imagination. It would be more realistic for the Court to admit these conditions are harmful, but tolerable, rather than condone them as “not harmful” to the patients.
The case before us today is reminiscent of this Court’s decision in Mallery v. Lewis, 106 Idaho 227 , 678 P.2d 19 (1983), in which the conditions of the Canyon County jail were reviewed and determined to be inadequate. The majority found the overcrowded conditions at the facility for adult pretrial detainees failed to meet constitutional minimum requirements. Id. 678 P.2d at 23 . Yet the majority refused to order the district court to enforce what it wished to be done, and refused to order the district court to retain jurisdiction to insure the jail did not receive any pre-trial inmates which it could not accommodate within constitutional bounds. Id. 678 P.2d at 30 . The result of this Court’s failure to act in a meaningful way with regard to the jail conditions was to shift the issue to the federal judiciary, thereby abdicating the Idaho judiciary’s responsibility with regard to jail conditions in the state. Id. 678 P.2d at 30 (Bistline, J., dissenting).
An analogous result is reached today in the majority’s decision that the conditions at State Hospital South are not harmful to the patients. The failure of the majority of this Court to provide a meaningful review of the constitutional requirements for living conditions in state facilities only furthers the abdication of judicial responsibility begun in Mattery. Persons housed in state institutions will have to continue to survive in subhuman conditions hoping the federal judiciary will provide the necessary constitutional review.