Three legal organizations filed suit June 26 against the state of Tennessee, claiming that it illegally mistreats youth with disabilities in juvenile justice facilities. 

The complaint, brought by Disability Rights Tennessee (DRT), the Youth Law Center (YLC), and Sanford Heisler Sharp, alleges that the state fails to appropriately evaluate youth for disabilities when they enter the system and to provide accommodations for those struggling with mental illness, intellectual disabilities, and behavioral disorders. 

“That can really result in some terrible conditions,” said Jasmine Ying Miller, a YLC staff attorney. “If you concentrate a bunch of young people who have fairly significant behavior and mental health needs in one place and don’t give them any services … that doesn’t tend to result in a really positive and healthy environment.”

The Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (DCS) unnecessarily places youth with disabilities in highly restrictive, prison-like facilities where patterns of abuse and violence are rampant, the complaint alleges.

“A one-size-fits-all approach does not work for young people with disabilities,” DRT attorney Sherry Wilds said in an email. “When Tennessee’s youth are deprived of evidence-based care and treatment appropriate for their basic needs, and instead are subjected to physical or sexual violence and psychological abuse, it compounds their existing trauma.”

The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office did not reply to phone calls and email requests for comment. 

The class action complaint notes that the state has a patchwork of placements available for youth, including home-based and foster care facilities. 

But the state rarely uses those options, the complaint says, and more often warehouses youth in “hardware secure” institutions far from home. As they await trial or serve post-adjudicatory commitments with DCS, youth are placed in cells with metal bed frames and handcuffed while escorted to solitary confinement. They navigate outbreaks of violence, a “points” system that rewards behavior often unattainable for those with disabilities, “woefully inadequate” education, and scarce specialized care.

“This restrictive placement is prioritized even though community-based programs have better development and recidivism outcomes than institutional settings, even for high-risk youths,” DRT attorney Jeremiah Jones said in an email.

The state has known about the system’s faults for years, with little change. DRT has monitored and investigated practices in state juvenile facilities since the early 2000s, according to DRT program director April Mancino-Rosete. The agency published three reports with YLC in the last two years, detailing the dangerous conditions in facilities and recommendations for steps toward solutions.

“The system has not been reformed, despite it being on the radar of the state,” said Jonathan Tepe, a Sanford Heisler Sharp attorney. “This has been going on too long, and the things that are happening in the juvenile justice system here are too awful to let continue.”

The legal organizations are representing three unnamed individual plaintiffs who are either currently or formerly in DCS custody and suffer from intellectual and emotional disabilities. 

One of the plaintiffs, a 17-year-old boy, was beaten more than 30 times, resulting in black eyes, a bruised jaw and ribs, and other injuries, the complaint said. A 12-year-old boy was shuffled between at least five different facilities over two years and said he began experiencing auditory hallucinations. A 15-year-old girl allegedly was shackled and dragged across the floor before being placed in solitary confinement and was pepper sprayed by facilities staff while she was naked in her cell.

Youth with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to abuse, lawyers said. And they’re disproportionately represented in the justice system: Of youth in the juvenile system nationwide, 65-68% have disabilities, according to the complaint.

Staff at Tennessee facilities have brutalized youth and routinely allow for violence between youth, the complaint said. Staffers offer cannabis vape pens and ramen noodle packets to bribe children to beat up others, Tepe added.

The complaint also documents the use of pepper spray and placing youth in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours per day and months at a time.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys argue the state fails to meet mandates by the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to provide accommodations and rehabilitative services to youth with disabilities in its custody. 

The lawsuit also claims the state violates the Eighth and 14th amendments, which, respectively, prohibit cruel and unusual punishment and ensure equal protection under the law. It names DCS, the Tennessee Department of Education, and each organization’s respective commissioners, Margie Quin and Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds.

The Tennessee Department of Education and DCS deferred to the Attorney General’s Office when reached via email. 

The plaintiffs’ attorneys seek a court order directing the state to implement policy changes to alleviate the abuse and shortcomings that plague the system. 

Such a win could be “very impactful,” not only in Tennessee but across the country, said Marsha Levick, co-founder and chief legal officer of the Juvenile Law Center.

“If someone can win and succeed on these kinds of claims in Tennessee, it provides a bit of a blueprint for how individuals and advocates, litigants, and lawyers in other states … [can] try to hold the next set of bad actors accountable,” said Levick, who is not involved with the case.

In Tennessee, attorneys and advocates hope for sweeping reform. A fundamental shift is needed, they said, to emphasize rehabilitation, community engagement, and family-based treatment instead of isolation, abuse, and punishment. 

“We are confident that the system could be dramatically improved, that these abuses should not be happening,” Tepe said. “I think that Tennessee can become a model of showing that you don’t have to warehouse these youth in prisons and that there is a better way to handle this type of system.”