Disability Rights Organization Files Lawsuit Against Florida Department of Children and Families for Unlawfully Failing to Track Baker Act Use

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Florida Health Justice Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of Disability Rights Florida against the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF). The suit claims DCF failed to follow Florida law requiring that it collect and publish specific data about the use of involuntary psychiatric examination under the Florida Mental Health Act, also known as the Baker Act.  

“The Baker Act requires that DCF track important facts about how involuntary psychiatric care is used, like how long the average patient stays in a receiving facility,” said Sam Boyd, SPLC senior supervising attorney for democracy, education and youth. “Its failure to do so interferes with Disability Rights Florida’s responsibility to protect and advocate for individuals subject to involuntary psychiatric examination.” 

The suit seeks to compel DCF to collect and publish the data the statute requires, including how long patients stay in receiving facilities and whether some categories of patients, such as children in the foster care system, stay for longer or pay more than others, such as those with private insurance. This data is important to help determine if the Baker Act is only being used on those who truly need it and whether it disproportionately is harming vulnerable groups.   

"Being able to track the amount of Medicaid dollars allocated to inpatient treatment as opposed to that in the community is critical to Disability Rights Florida’s mission to advocate for its constituents to receive needed mental health care in the least restrictive settings possible,” said Katy DeBriere, legal director for Florida Health Justice Project. “We seek enforcement of the Florida legislature's will to enable DRF to forward that mission." 

Over the last two decades, use of the Baker Act, including against children, has more than doubled, far outpacing growth in Florida’s population or rates of mental health diagnoses. 

“Involuntary psychiatric examination and hospitalization is a massive infringement on one’s rights,” said Caitlyn Clibbon, director of community and health services at Disability Rights Florida. “The data we seek, and that the Legislature has required DCF to collect and report, is necessary to our work monitoring the use of the Baker Act. We have an obligation to protect and advance the rights of people with disabilities and serious mental illness; DCF’s failure to heed the Legislature’s mandate is impeding that very important work.” 

In 2021, the SPLC published the report COSTLY AND CRUEL How Misuse of the Baker Act Harms 37,000 Florida Children Each Year, which documented the overuse of the Baker Act on children across Florida. Since the publication of that report, the child Baker Act rates which determines the number of times children are subjected to involuntary examination per year, have begun to drop statewide after more than 20 years in which they increased every year at rates faster than Florida’s population growth. But this progress is not enough—Florida still uses involuntary examination far more than other states. Better data collection, including the data the Florida Legislature required DCF to collect but which it has not obtained, is an important step to continuing to close that gap.