Suit challenges state’s civil drug-abuse commitments

Civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit Monday that seeks to overturn a Massachusetts statute allowing women with substance-abuse disorders to be held for 90 days without criminal charges at the women’s prison in Framingham.

The suit, filed in US District Court in Boston, challenges the constitutionality of a law, known as Section 35, that allows judges to order the civil commitment of women if they are deemed at risk of harming themselves or others.

“This complaint reflects our view and the view of several other leading civil-rights organizations that no one should go to prison for suffering from a disease,” said Matthew Segal, legal director for the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of three groups that filed the suit in conjunction with the law firm WilmerHale.

The women are sent to Framingham if no beds are available at the Women’s Addiction Treatment Center in New Bedford, a private 90-bed facility with a broad range of treatment authorized by the Department of Public Health.

The women in Framingham, by contrast, receive no treatment for substance abuse, including services available to criminally convicted inmates, and are subjected to many of the rigors and restrictions of prison life, Segal said.

A spokeswoman for Governor Deval Patrick, who is named as a defendant, defended the administration’s efforts to improve substance-abuse treatment and curb the use of Framingham for civil commitments. The governor’s fiscal 2015 budget proposal and other efforts to address drug abuse “include additional funding to significantly increase the number of treatment beds within the Department of Public Health available for individuals” held under Section 35, said Heather Nichols, the spokeswoman.

Segal said the women being held should not be penalized because the state has not provided funding. “These women are not being held because they have been charged with or convicted of any crime,” reads the complaint, which was filed under the pseudonym of Jane Doe. “They are committed solely for the explicit statutory purpose of Section 35: ‘inpatient care’ of individuals at risk of ‘serious harm’ resulting from their addiction.”

Segal said approximately 540 women were held under civil commitments at Framingham between 2011 and 2013.