In a victory for parents and children with disabilities, Maine’s highest court reversed a decision that punished a family for the state’s own failure to provide home nursing services for a child. Parents should not be separated from their children because the state has failed to meet its own legal obligations to provide essential medical care to children with disabilities.
Case Background:
This case stems from the 2023 termination of a Maine mother’s parental rights. In 2019, Maine's Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) filed a child protective order for the mother’s two children: her eldest, who was born prematurely with a range of medical challenges that require constant monitoring, and his younger brother. Following the death of her spouse, the mother engaged in mental health treatment and demonstrated that she could meet her younger son’s needs. The mother and younger son were reunited in 2021, but DHHS continued to separate the mother and older son.
A week after reuniting the younger child, the department filed a petition to terminate the mother’s parental rights for the older child. The child qualifies for 24/7 nursing care under MaineCare, but the state never provided it. Following a three-day hearing, the Lewiston District Court issued a decision terminating the mother’s parental rights in March 2023. The court found her unfit not based on her lack of will but based on her inability to meet her eldest son’s complex medical needs. The mother’s successful reunification with her youngest child underscores that she likely could have cared for her eldest as well, if the state had only provided the nursing services required by law. But the mother was never given that chance.
ACLU Files Friend-of-the-Court Brief:
The mother appealed the court’s decision in May 2023, asking Maine’s highest court to restore her parental rights. In August of 2023, the ACLU of Maine and Disability Rights Maine filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Maine Supreme Judicial Court arguing that the lower court incorrectly terminated her parental rights.
We argued that the state should have evaluated whether the mother could have cared for her child if she had been provided the level of care the family was legally entitled to receive. Instead, the state inappropriately terminated the mother’s parental rights because she was unable to provide complex nursing care on her own, effectively punishing her for the state’s own failure. Our amicus brief also argued, for the first time in the appeal, that the mother herself may be entitled to reasonable accommodations because of a possible intellectual disability.
Victory for Parents and Children with Disabilities:
In January 2024, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court agreed with our arguments and overturned the lower court order. The unanimous decision is a victory for disabled parents and children, affirming the state’s responsibility to provide legally required services and accommodations to ensure families can stay together.
The decision highlights several systemic failures in Maine’s child welfare systems where disability is involved. Adults and children with disabilities often do not receive the services to which they are entitled, either because of inadequate resources, as with the child in this case, or because of a lack of basic understanding that people with disabilities have the legal right to accommodations, as with the mother. This ruling affirmed the state’s duty to adhere to disability rights law: that DHHS must accommodate parents with disabilities, and “[i]nadequate resources do not excuse a state’s obligation to provide benefits.”
The court further ruled that parents with disabilities are entitled to reasonable accommodations in the reunification process in child welfare cases such as this one. The Law Court ordered the lower court to reconsider whether the mother has an intellectual disability and its impact on the department’s obligations.
