United States v. Maine – Protecting Youth Disability Rights

The State of Maine has a troubling history of failing to protect children with disabilities. After the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) launched an investigation that found Maine was discriminating against children with disabilities, the DOJ sued the state. The state and DOJ reached a settlement agreement that strengthened protections for Maine’s children under federal disability rights law.

The ACLU of Maine and its partners are now fighting to ensure that settlement remains in place and its protections are upheld.

Disability Rights Maine filed a complaint with DOJ in 2019. DOJ launched an investigation that found Maine was discriminating against youth with disabilities by failing to maintain an adequate behavioral health system that prevented institutionalization. Following the investigation, DOJ sued the State of Maine in September 2024 for violating young people's rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The investigation found that:

• “Maine’s community-based behavioral health system fails to provide sufficient services. As a result, hundreds of children are unnecessarily segregated in institutions each year, while other children are at serious risk of entering institutions.”
• “Children are unable to access behavioral health services in their homes and communities — services that are part of an existing array of programs that the State advertises to families through its Medicaid program (MaineCare) but does not make available in a meaningful or timely manner.”
• “Maine children with behavioral health needs are eligible and appropriate for the range of community-based services the State offers, but either remain in segregated settings or are at serious risk of institutionalization.”
• “Families and children in Maine are overwhelmingly open to receiving services in integrated settings. In fact, parents indicated a strong preference that their children receive services at home due to trauma, neglect, and abuse that their children reportedly endured in residential facilities within and outside of Maine.”

In November 2024, Maine reached a settlement with DOJ, agreeing to support children with disabilities and comply with federal law. Important provisions of the settlement included:

• Identifying children with behavioral health needs and conducting a holistic assessment that will help determine the full array of community-based services to which they are entitled;
• Providing children with wraparound care coordination services to identify and connect them with community-based services;
• Requiring timely access to services to help children avoid institutionalization and, for children already in out-of-home placements, the development of concrete plans with timelines to provide services to support a return to their communities;
• Improving oversight to ensure quality and timeliness of services and to address workforce shortages;
• Ensuring the availability of mobile crisis intervention services to help children avoid unnecessary emergency departments and law enforcement interaction; and
• Ongoing oversight from an independent reviewer and, if necessary, judicial oversight.

Less than a year after the settlement between DOJ and Maine, both parties submitted a joint request to the court asking that they be allowed to modify the settlement. Among other things, the proposed modifications included:

• Eliminating the independent reviewer, an expert tasked with measuring Maine’s compliance and monitoring progress toward specific benchmarks
• Removing protections for Maine children involved in the juvenile justice system
• Limiting outreach to families, children, and other stakeholders
• Eliminating certain “competency-based curricula” from the training requirements for community providers

On Sept. 18, 2025, the ACLU of Maine filed an amicus brief urging the court to deny the motion. The proposed modifications would be harmful to Maine's children and families.

Eliminating the independent reviewer would mean that there is no neutral expert charged with ensuring children receive appropriate care and that Maine is accountable for complying with federal law. The changes related to justice-involved children mean that those children are more likely to experience prolonged institutionalization at Long Creek (Maine’s youth detention center) and be denied appropriate community-based services. Eliminating outreach and training requirements means fewer children and stakeholders are aware of remedial services and that those services are less likely to be provided in a professionally adequate manner.

On Oct. 22, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine heard oral arguments from the U.S., the State of Maine, and a coalition of advocates that included the ACLU of Maine, Disability Rights Maine, GLAD Law, and the Center for Public Representation. After the hearing, the judge ordered two more rounds of briefing, which the ACLU of Maine submitted jointly with the coalition.

On Nov. 24, 2025, the judge ruled in favor of our coalition, denying the U.S. and Maine's effort to walk back the settlement commitments they made in November 2024 to help protect Maine children from unnecessary institutionalization.

"...the Parties seek to alter terms that were plainly bargained for and incorporated into the original Settlement Agreement. Absent a showing of changed circumstances under Rufo and given the strong public interest in finality, the Court must deny the Parties’ present joint motion to amend," Judge Neumann concluded.

The State of Maine and the United States have both appealed the district court’s November 2025 decision that the settlement must stay in place. The ACLU of Maine and partners are seeking to intervene in the appeal to ensure protections for Maine’s children with disabilities are upheld.