The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that psychiatric patients held involuntarily in emergency rooms must be offered a chance to contest their detention within 72 hours of their arrival.
The court’s opinion found the state government violated due process rights of people in mental health crises as they await treatment in the state, scoring a major victory for mental health advocates.
The Granite State’s law requires probable cause hearings for psychiatric patients within three days of an “involuntary emergency admission,” though the state argues the clock does not begin ticking until someone is transferred to an inpatient medical facility. Those facilities often do not have available beds, leaving patients in emergency departments for weeks at a time.
Now, patients who have involuntarily entered an emergency room must be offered a chance to contest their holding within three days as soon as an involuntary emergency admission “certificate is completed,” the court ruled.
Tuesday’s verdict reaffirms a lower-court ruling in favor of a woman who spent over two weeks at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center’s emergency room before she was taken to the state psychiatric hospital, according to the Associated Press.
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“Nothing in the statutory scheme allows a person to be held indefinitely pending delivery to a receiving facility,” the court said in its ruling.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire lauded the ruling on Tuesday. The state’s ACLU previously filed a separate class-action lawsuit in federal court regarding the issue.
“Today’s historic decision is a major victory for mental health advocacy: it recognizes that those being boarded in hospital emergency rooms are human beings entitled to prompt due process,” ACLU Legal Director Gilles Bissonnette said.
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The Washington Examiner contacted the Supreme Court of New Hampshire but did not immediately receive a response.
