Minnesota Supreme Court rules that State must follow Court Orders
Yes, you read that right.
As attorneys for patients of the Minnesota Sex Offenders Program (MSOP), where persons alleged to be sexually dangerous are detained, (supposedly for treatment), we at Gustafson Gluek spend a lot of time litigating court orders.
The recent Minnesota Supreme Court opinion in McDeid v. Johnston is illustrative. In McDeid, the conduct of State Officials, including the Department of Human Services (DHS) Commissioner and the Executive Director of the MSOP Nancy Johnston, led the Minnesota Supreme Court to rule that court orders to move patients to a less restrictive setting cannot be willfully ignored. The Minnesota Supreme Court found that these State Officials have a “clear obligation to transfer patients” to less restrictive facilities “within a reasonable time following a CAP [Commitment Appeals Panel] transfer order.” The Court reversed and remanded the case to the Court of Appeals to further address whether the State Officials’ failure to timely transfer Plaintiffs was a constitutional violation under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Justice Paul Thissen, writing for a unanimous McDeid Court, was unconvinced by the State’s “startling” argument that “the law excuses noncompliance with even explicit, mandatory court orders due to the inability to comply.” Justice Thissen concluded that “Nothing in the statute suggests the [Commitment Appeals Panel (CAP)] transfer orders for reduction in custody are effective and operational only when the Commissioner concludes that the CAP got the decision right.”
The Respondents further claimed that DHS was unable to transfer patients within a reasonable amount of time due to budgetary restraints and a lack of bed space at less-restrictive facilities, and therefore their noncompliance with the CAP transfer orders was justified. Justice Thissen disagreed, first noting that “the State controls the amount of bed space and allocation of resources to ensure there is sufficient bed space to run the MSOP program,” and that in any case “[t]he statute does not allow the State Officials to ignore the transfer order.”
On remand to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, the case is also created a robust discussion of both procedural and substantive due process violations of Petitioners’ civil rights and the State’s defense of qualified immunity to flout court orders.
How did this case come about?
Ricky Lee McDeid and Shane Gerry, both involuntarily committed to MSOP, sought to be transferred to Community Preparation Services(CPS), facilities in St. Peter, Minnesota outside of the barbed wire fence where MSOP patients receive substantially greater freedoms. A transfer to CPS is legally considered a reduction in custody and is functionally required in the treatment process that leads to discharge.
The CAP ordered that McDeid and Gerry be transferred to CPS, but State Officials delayed for over two years. McDeid and Gary alleged that the excessive delay and inability for them to progress in their treatment was a violation of their due process rights under 42 U.S.C.§1983. Respondents asserted that they are protected by qualified immunity, which protects state officials from suit unless Plaintiffs can demonstrate that the challenged conduct violated a “clearly established right” of which a “reasonable official would be aware.”
Because the Minnesota Supreme Court, in the McDeid order discussed above, held that the right of an MSOP patient to be transferred within a reasonable amount of time after an order for transfer was a clearly established right of which the State Officials were aware, the issue on remand to the Court of Appeals was whether the Petitioners properly pleaded violations of federal due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court of Appeals found no binding authority addressing the nature of the liberty interests of persons who have been lawfully committed. So, “[e]xtrapolating from existing caselaw,” the Court of Appeals said the Petitioners must demonstrate “a dramatic departure from the typical conditions of [their] commitment.” Because Petitioners could “likely demonstrate that their commitment was lengthened due to respondent’s failure to transfer them”, the Court of Appeals remanded the first procedural due process claim to the District Court for evidentiary findings.
Petitioners’ other due process violation alleged that the State violated Petitioners’ property interests because they had a clearly established right to be transferred within a reasonable time after the transfer order issued, as was established five months earlier in the McDeid Supreme Court decision. The Court of Appeals found that Petitioners successfully pled violations of their property interests in timely transfer and again remanded the count to the District Court.
The Court of Appeals then turned to Petitioners’ claim for violations of their due process rights, a task that can strike fear into the heart of the most gifted litigator.
Substantive due process claims are very difficult to maintain because the standards for challenged conduct are extremely high. Historically, substantive due process has been evaluated under different tests depending on if the allegation is facial or as-applied violation. Under current precedent, however, a plaintiff must show that the conduct is both ‘conscience-shocking’ and ‘a violation of fundamental rights deeply rooted in American history and implicit in the concept of liberty and justice.’” Specific courts may also require evaluation of factors within those standards depending on what kind of conduct is being challenged. In particular, Minnesota courts have considered “conscience-shocking” behavior as behavior that is “egregious, malicious, or sadistic.”
Under this standard, the Minnesota Court of Appeals found that Petitioners’ two-year delay did not rise to the level of “conscience shocking” because Petitioners could not plausibly allege that Respondents’ conduct was egregious, malicious, or sadistic. The Court also found that Petitioners did not plausibly allege that timely transfer to a less-restrictive treatment facility was a “fundamental right” that was “deeply rooted in American history.” As such, they affirmed the original District Court order dismissing Petitioners’ substantive due process claims.
Is MSOP unconstitutional?
The claims in McDeid are not anomalous. At any given time, there are dozens of MSOP patients with orders for transfer to CPS. Additionally, every year there are likely hundreds of MSOP patients with pending petitions for transfer or for reduction in custody. Every one of these individuals is likely to have their rights violated by the officials running MSOP. But more broadly, McDeid raises questions about the overarching constitutionality of continued detention for MSOP patients. Gustafson Gluek argued as much in an amicus curiae brief it filed in the McDeid case.
But the Commissioner of the DHS and the other State Officials continue to argue that MSOP lacks the resources to adequately house their patients. These cases emerged simultaneously with the reports of a state budget surplus of about $17.5 billion. That surplus could have been even larger if the State had saved the $16 million it has spent in the last few years because 55 clients were not transferred as ordered. The annual cost of the MSOP program is nearly $100 million. The CPS treatment that was ordered is substantially less expensive.
In February 2023, Gustafson Gluek filed a similar case in Federal Court before Judge Tunheim in the District of Minnesota. The plaintiffs in that case, John James Rud and Brian Keith Hausfeld, were not transferred as ordered from Moose Lake to CPS. On March 23, 2023, Judge Tunheim noted that Plaintiff Hausfeld’s transfer was delayed more than nine months and Plaintiff Rud had not yet been transferred.
Judge Tunheim granted injunctive relief to Rud, who represents a class of plaintiffs awaiting transfer. (Hausfeld was not part of the motion.) The Judge refused to stay the preliminary injunction pending the State’s appeal to the 8th Circuit, finding the State unlikely to succeed in the appeal. The balance of harms and the public interest did not weigh in the State’s favor, Judge Tunheim ruled. While the case was pending, McDeid was decided by the Supreme Court and provided to Judge Tunheim.
The prevailing wind indicates that neither state nor federal courts intend to continue watching the State deprive people of due process of the law by waving off court orders.