Bill seeks to update mental health and substance abuse laws
'I got really frustrated in dealing with Baker Act cases because it frequently seemed like there was no good solution. The law just didn’t work'
Rep. Patt Maney
The Florida House Children, Families and Seniors Subcommittee is proposing sweeping changes to the state’s mental health and substance abuse laws during this legislative session.
Rep. Patt Maney, R-Shalimar, a retired judge and vice chair of the committee, said during a subcommittee discussion last week that he has been working to reform these laws since being elected to the House in 2020 after presiding over cases involving The Florida Mental Health Act of 1971, better known as the Baker Act.
“I got really frustrated in dealing with Baker Act cases because it frequently seemed like there was no good solution. The law just didn’t work,” Maney said on January 10. “And many times, I said to myself, and out loud: ‘What were they thinking?’”
Maney estimates Florida taxpayers spend about $800 million a year, or $2.2 million a day to house criminals with mental illnesses in county jails, forensic treatment facilities, and state prisons.
He said that, according to the National Conference of Chief Justices, mental health laws needed to be fixed. A grand jury report from Miami Dade County in 2010 echoed this, as did a state interim report published last year from the Commission on Mental Health and Substance Abuse.
“This is not a criminal justice problem, although it impacts criminal justice. It impacts the court,” Maney said. “But really, it’s a public health problem where people are sick. And we need to provide treatment.”
The bill passed the subcommittee, it’s first stop in the House, unanimously. When Maney presented it that day, the bill was still a proposed committee bill. He is now sponsoring it under HB 7021. A similar bill, SB 1784, has been filed by Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, also an attorney.
Similar to the Baker Act, the law that deals with substance abuse is called the Marchman Act. The bill addresses statutes related to both laws since a person with one disorder is often suffering from the other, Maney said. Both acts allow a person to be involuntarily committed if they are an imminent danger to themselves or others.
The sweeping 110-page House proposal makes changes to 50 different state statutes in seven different chapters of law across six different categories known as titles, including: Title V Judicial Branch, Title XLIII Domestic Relations, Title XLVII Criminal Procedure and Corrections, Title XXIX Public Health, Title XXX Social Welfare, and Title XXXII Regulation of Professions and Occupations.
Major changes the House bill would make to one or both laws include:
- Allowing psychiatric nurses to release patients from a crisis “receiving” facility.
- Creating a more personalized health care plan for patients who are discharged.
- Giving officers discretion in whether they need to bring someone in for an involuntary examination. This could influence how school children are treated when officers are called regarding their behavior.
- Prohibiting a court from ordering a developmentally disabled patient who has no co-occurring mental illness to be involuntarily placed in a state mental health treatment facility.
- Removing the 30-bed limit for crisis stabilization units so that more people can get treatment.
- Requiring the Florida Department of Children and Families to publish reports regarding involuntary treatment services on its website. It would also direct DCF and the Agency for Health Care Administration to analyze data related to high users of state crisis stabilization and treatment services to identify trends and make recommendations on how to decrease avoidable admissions.
- Streamlining processes for involuntary assessments and treatment, including allowing witnesses such as medical professionals to attend hearings remotely, under both laws, and allow a court to order a Baker Act involuntary examination during a Marchman Act hearing.
Maney said while the bills don’t contemplate expanding the definition beyond an “imminent danger,” he thinks it would be a good idea.
“If I had my magic wand, I would probably want to look at whether it was feasible, and that includes money, to expand the criteria for it,” said Maney. “I’ve seen too many cases where people who have been through the system before know the magic words, or they learn the magic words while they’re in the hospital. And so, the criteria is ‘imminent danger.’”
Patients learn to say things like, “’Oh, well, I would never kill somebody,” Maney said. Or “’I have no desire to commit suicide. I’m not in imminent danger anymore.”
He added, “So it seems to me we ought to look at something like that. But that is not in the bill.”
Rep. Dotie Joseph, D-North Miami, also an attorney, indicated to Maney that she may want to collaborate with him on including this language. She also pointed out that expanding Medicaid to the working poor in Florida would help solve the legal problems created by mental health and substance use disorders so that people could afford treatment without committing a crime to receive it, which is also not contemplated in the bill.
“While some people think that the state is providing services at a strong level, we know from the calls that we get in our offices that a lot of things are not being addressed,” said Joseph.
In attendance at the subcommittee discussion was Miami Judge Steve Leifman who received an award from Pope Francis last year in honor of his work diverting those with mental health issues away from the criminal justice system and toward treatment programs. He waved in support of the measure.
Leifman has pushed to get the Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery up and running for 23 years. It will open sometime this year.
