The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Photo: Ken Lund

A lawsuit alleging that officials in upstate New York's Orange County unconstitutionally failed to provide mental health discharge planning to two individuals in immigration detention will continue after a federal appellate court reversed a lower court ruling that dismissed the litigation.

The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said in a decision Friday that the plaintiffs could argue that such planning qualifies as legally mandated in-custody care and could therefore be evaluated through a constitutional lens.

“If discharge planning is to occur at all, it must, by definition, occur prior to release from custody,” said the court's decision, which was written by U.S. Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch.

The litigation was brought against Orange County by two individuals who were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Both were jailed in Orange County, which has an agreement with the federal immigration agency to house civil immigration detainees while they await deportation proceedings, according to the decision.

They were held for several months in the Orange County Correctional Facility, where they received treatment for various mental health conditions. Both were also lawful, permanent residents of the U.S., the decision said.

When both plaintiffs were released from jail after successfully avoiding deportation, neither was given their medication or any post-release treatment plan, the lawsuit claimed.

One plaintiff, Michelet Charles, was released directly after his hearing in Manhattan without a plan or his medication. Without treatment Charles soon began “psychologically decompensating,” according to the decision. Charles was eventually hospitalized in an inpatient psychiatric unit, where he spent two months before he was deemed stable.

The other plaintiff, Carol Small, was ordered to be released from the jail by an immigration judge. She was given $80 in cash, which she used to take a train from Orange County to Manhattan, after which she stayed briefly with family members, according to the lawsuit.

Small eventually had to check herself into an emergency room in the Bronx, where she was able to be prescribed the medications she was taking while in jail, the decision said. She had made a list of the medications she was taking while detailed.

Small and Charles alleged that before they were released, they were not provided with details on their treatment while in jail, including what medications they were prescribed while incarcerated. They filed a lawsuit against Orange County in 2016 that claimed their due process rights had been violated because of the alleged lapse.

U.S. District Judge Nelson Roman of the Southern District of New York granted a motion by Orange County to dismiss the litigation in 2017. Roman wrote at the time that the county's actions were not unconstitutionally unlawful, even if they were negligent.

Roman recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment would require that the jail provide medical care to detainees while they are in custody. But he interpreted the mental health discharge planning as post-release treatment, not in-custody care. Lynch disagreed with that interpretation in appellate court's decision Friday.

“We find that Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that discharge planning is an essential part of in-custody care,” Lynch wrote. “We conclude that despite the forward-looking nature of discharge planning, a claim for damages caused by the lack of it can be considered a claim for deprivation of in-custody care for purposes of the 'special relationship' exception.”

The decision was one of first impression, meaning that the appellate court had not previously considered the specific issue in the litigation.

The plaintiffs were represented in the litigation by New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Daniel Stujenske, counsel at Simpson Thacher, said they're looking forward to going back to the district court to continue the litigation.

“We intend to prove that our clients' constitutional rights were violated when they were not provided discharge planning as part of their treatment for serious mental health illnesses,” Stujenske said. “We are gratified that the Second Circuit concluded that our clients could pursue their claims that the defendants were deliberately indifferent to our clients' serious medical needs by failing to provide adequate care.”

Langdon Chapman, the county attorney for Orange County, said the appellate court did not address other arguments they made previously to dismiss the litigation and that they may renew those defenses before the district court.

“The Second Circuit made a limited holding in which they assumed (as they are required to) that all of Plaintiffs' allegations were true,” Chapman said. “The County has appropriate policies in place. The Court did not address a number of other dispositive defenses raised below, which we are considering renewing on remand.”

The case will now resume at the district court in White Plains, though future dates have not been set.

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