After the Southern Poverty Law Center sued it two years ago, the Palm Beach County School Board revised its policy regarding school children and the use of forced psychiatric examinations under the Florida Mental Health Law, also known as the Baker Act.
“They've since improved what they were doing significantly, but there was a really strong racial disproportionality in how they were using the Baker Act and they didn't know that until we looked at it," said Sam Boyd, SPLC staff attorney.
The Baker Act has been used to take children from their classrooms, handcuffed and in the back of police cars, to psychiatric facilities without their parents’ input and held for up to 72 business hours.
But in DP and Disability Rights Florida v School Board of Palm Beach County, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida held that parental consent is constitutionally required before an involuntary examination, except in the event of a true emergency.
“The school district revised their policies really significantly,” Boyd told the Florida Record. “A lot of the things we had asked for, the district had done by the time the lawsuit was over. They will tell you that we had nothing to do with it but we saw the numbers drop by 80% from more than 400 Baker Acts in 2020 after we filed the lawsuit.”
U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon entered a judgment against the district on behalf of four sets of parents and their children with disabilities, who were unlawfully handcuffed and/or removed from their school and subjected to an involuntary psychiatric examination without parental consent.
Each of the four plaintiffs will receive $440,000.
“The school district has since adopted some really extensive new policies, which we still think have some changes they need to make, but definitely were a lot better than what was in place when we filed the lawsuit,” Boyd added.
From the 2016 school year until the 2020 school year, the School District of Palm Beach County initiated at least 1,216 involuntary examinations against their students, invoking the Baker Act 252 times on elementary school students, according to an SPLC press release.
Black students were taken for involuntary examination at twice the rate of white students while students with disabilities are also disproportionately committed under the Baker Act.
"Despite being aware of its inappropriate use of the Baker Act for years, SDPBC has done little to eliminate unnecessary Baker Act use or train its personnel on alternatives," the 2021 complaint states. "Its published Baker Act policy, as well as its meager police training materials, are full of omissions and inaccuracies about the statute’s requirements and provide little guidance about when initiating an involuntary examination of a child is appropriate."