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Supreme Court finds involuntary medication statute facially unconstitutional

By: Michaela Paukner, [email protected]//April 10, 2020//

Supreme Court finds involuntary medication statute facially unconstitutional

By: Michaela Paukner, [email protected]//April 10, 2020//

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court has decided a Wisconsin statute allowing involuntary medication of inmates is facially unconstitutional under certain circumstances.

The high court reviewed Winnebago County v. C.S., who is a man diagnosed with schizophrenia. While in prison, C.S. was committed and found incompetent to refuse medication pursuant to Wis. Stat. § 51.61(1)(g). He then became subject to various court orders calling for involuntary medication.

C.S. was released from prison in 2015 and filed a motion for postcommitment relief, arguing Wis. Stat. § 51.61(1)(g) was facially unconstitutional when an inmate is committed under Wis. Stat. § 51.20(1)(ar) without being found dangerous.

A circuit court and the appellate court found the statute was facially constitutional, but a state Supreme Court majority disagreed. On Friday, the state Supreme Court announced it was reversing the Court of Appeal’s decision and remanding the case to the circuit court with an order to vacate C.S.’s June 2015 order for involuntary medication and treatment.

Justice Annette Ziegler delivered the majority opinion and was joined by Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet and Dan Kelly.

Ziegler said the crux of the issue in the case was C.S.’s argument that Wis. Stat. § 51.61(1)(g) is facially unconstitutional when an inmate is committed under Wis. Stat. § 51.20(1)(ar), which does not require a finding of dangerousness.

The county had argued that Wis. Stat. § 51.61(1)(g)3 invokes its parens patriae power. The county said it had a legitimate interest in caring for and helping an inmate who was mentally ill and found incompetent.

“We reject such limitless assertions of the State’s power to involuntarily medicate committed inmates,” Ziegler wrote.

Ziegler said the state’s parens patriae power is related to dangerousness, but the part of Wis. Stat. § 51.61(1)(g)3. under review is not.

“Incompetence to refuse medication alone is not an essential or overriding State interest and cannot justify involuntary medication,” Ziegler wrote.

Justice Rebecca Bradley and Justice Brian Hagedorn, joined by Chief Justice Pat Roggensack, each filed dissenting opinions.

Bradley said C.S. didn’t invoke the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privilege or Immunities Clause or the Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness Clause of the Wisconsin Consitution, which could have served as constitutional protection against involuntary medication. Rather, he relied on the amendment’s due process, which Bradley said doesn’t protect any substantive rights.

“No United States Supreme Court case recognizes an inmate’s ‘substantive’ due process right to avoid the involuntary administration of medication absent a finding of dangerousness,” Bradley wrote. “Accordingly, C.S.’s challenge to the constitutionality of Wis. Stat. § 51.61(1)(g) on this basis should fail.”

Hagedorn also disagreed with the majority’s decision, writing the majority applied standards for non-inmates to C.S. and made new constitutional rights with its decision.

“We should not miss what’s really happening here,” Hagedorn wrote. “With no text as our guide—which distinguishes this from enumerated constitutional liberties like the freedom of speech and religion—we have assumed the incredible power to make what are quintessentially policy decisions, and to call those decisions constitutional law.”

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