Disability rights advocates are dead wrong for opposing Gov. Newsom’s Care Court | Opinion

According to certain disability and civil rights groups, California can’t even try to save the lives of people with schizophrenia. We have no right to get between them and their illness. Because to mandate the help that someone is too ill to know he needs would — are you ready? — discriminate against that person on the basis of his diagnosis.

Instead, according to advocates for the status quo, we should keep doing exactly what we’re doing for the seriously mentally ill and homeless. Which is leaving them the hell alone. And in the process, leaving them in hell, held hostage to delusions we don’t dare interrupt because we’d rather protect their highly theoretical freedom than keep them alive.

If that strikes you as nonsensical, or maybe even cruel, well then what kind of progressive are you? Maybe one who has had it, as our governor has, and as we have, too, with pretending that letting people die from our failure to intervene is compassionate.

Disability Rights California, Western Center on Law & Poverty and The Public Interest Law Project are suing to block the CARE Court program for the severely mentally ill that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in September.

Under the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Act, a family member, first responder or anyone else would be able to petition a new kind of civil court to temporarily mandate and provide housing and care for a person with an untreated and incapacitating mental illness.

In their petition to the California Supreme Court, the groups said the CARE Courts would rob those in the program of their rights by limiting their “autonomy in choosing their medical provider and where and with whom they live.”

What medical provider? And does anyone who has met a seriously mentally ill person think they are choosing anything at all in the full flower of freedom? Those the CARE Court is designed to help lost their autonomy to their disease long ago.

“Although designed to address the State’s homelessness crisis,” the petition went on, “it will not further that goal.” There we agree: It absolutely will not solve homelessness, and no one should ever have suggested otherwise, because most people living on the street are not so compromised that they believe they are being tormented by aliens.

But the CARE Court is not “needlessly burdening fundamental rights to privacy, autonomy and liberty” to provide the help that families of the most seriously mentally ill Californians are typically unable to get for their loved ones.

The petition from the rights groups says the program violates the equal protection clause of the state constitution “because it singles out people with schizophrenia for burdensome court proceedings and coerced treatment not imposed on others similarly situated.”

What’s burdensome is a disease so pitiless that it destroys lives and families. Right now, severely mentally ill people often wind up in jail because we’re doing so little to provide alternatives before it ever comes to that.

The CARE Court concept “seeks to trade in people’s fundamental rights in favor of an ineffective short-term system of government,” said Sarah Gregory, a senior attorney with Disability Rights California. “That’s a radical break from what California has historically done.”

How can we know it’s ineffective when it’s never been tried? We need a radical break from what California has historically done, which is the liberal equivalent of thoughts and prayers.

Because as state Sen. Tom Umberg, who co-wrote the CARE Court legislation, said in a statement responding to the lawsuit, “there is no humanity or due process in the current state of affairs with homelessness and mental health.”

Those who fear a return to warehousing should check in with those desperate to find even one bed for one loved one who wants treatment.

We agree with Jessica Cruz, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness California, who said in a statement that “continuing the status quo for those living with severe mental illness is not an option. NAMI California continues to strongly believe in the promise of California’s landmark CARE Act. CARE Court ensures those suffering from serious mental illness will have the opportunity to heal and receive help through housing and services in the community.”

Our worry about CARE Court is not that there will be mass roundups and hospitalizations of homeless people but that there won’t be enough housing and treatment in the community, which really is what we’re talking about, for those who need it the most.

This story was originally published January 31, 2023 at 5:00 AM.