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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10-01-26 Correspondence - Disability Rights Montana - Growth Rings - BREAKING_ MT Fed Court Order on Disability Rights + How we Change the SystemFrom:Disability Rights Montana - Growth Rings To:Bozeman Public Comment Subject:[EXTERNAL]BREAKING: MT Fed Court Order on Disability Rights + How We Change the System Date:Thursday, October 1, 2026 2:43:32 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more Every paid subscription supports Disability Rights Montana’s work across Montana. Federal funding is nowhere near sufficient to meet the advocacy and culture change work that is needed. You can help fund the future you want to see! BREAKING: MT Fed Court Order onDisability Rights + How We Changethe System These two articles look at the needed accountability for a past death of aHelena man and the system advocacy required in Montana before ithappens again. READ IN APP OCT 1 On November 2, 2024 Paul Rolfes was killed by the Helena Police Department. Yesterday, a federal court in Montana ruled that claims brought by his estate alleging disability discrimination by the police can moved forward. For Montanans with mental health disabilities, the reasoning matters far beyond one lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, police knew Paul had a mental health disability. While barricaded alone in a bathroom, he told officers he was scared, said that he needed help, and specifically asked for a mental health professional and later a nurse. The complaint alleges that resources to accommodate his mental-health emergency were available, but officers instead escalated the encounter. Officers ultimately shot and killed him. His estate brought claims that include violations of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Disability Rights Montana’s former Director of Advocacy Tal Goldin appeared to represent the estate alongside Hillary Carls of Carls Law and Timothy Bechtold of Bechtold Law Firm. MT Federal Court order affirms thatdisability rights do not disappearwhen police appear The City of Helena asked the court to dismiss the federal disability discrimination claims against the City. The court said no. And the reason why deserves attention. When we hear “Americans with Disabilities Act” most of us think ramps, accessible parking spaces, interpreters or accommodations at work. But Title II of the ADA is much broader. It prohibits disability discrimination by state and local governments. The Americans with Disabilities Act is not just about access to buildings. It is about access to government without discrimination. The prohibition against discrimination doesn’t apply only to the physical spaces governments build. It reaches the services, programs and activities governments provide, including law enforcement. Police don’t operate outside the ADA simply because their jobs are difficult or dangerous. Montana is in the Ninth Circuit of federal courts. The Ninth Circuit has already recognized that the ADA applies to arrests. In the Ninth Circuit, disability can require law enforcement to reasonably modify its approach, while legitimate safety concerns and exigent circumstances are part of determining what is reasonable. That does not mean every police interaction involving a disabled person violates the ADA. It means disability is part of determining what a reasonable response looks like. And here, the court found enough had been alleged to keep the claim alive. The order recognized that the complaint alleged Paul was in a bathroom by himself and he specifically asked for the accommodation he needed: a mental health professional. And, according to the allegations, police had resources available to respond to that request but did not to use them. Police cannot discriminate against disabledpeople That matters. The case is far from over. At this stage, the court is not deciding whether the allegations are true or whether the City ultimately violated federal disability law. The question is whether the lawsuit alleges enough facts to state a legally viable claim. The court concluded that it does. That isn’t the end of the case. But it means the disability discrimination claim gets its day in court. You can read the decisions yourself here: Court Order This ruling at this stage matters because disability rights do not disappear when police appear. Accommodating a psychiatric disability isn’t something the government only has to do in an assigned cubicle in a drab office building when everything is calm and Why this matters beyond one case convenient. That obligation doesn’t vanish simply because the government service being provided is law enforcement. The ADA was built for real life. It recognizes that equal access sometimes requires the government to do things differently when disability requires it. In the Ninth Circuit, officer safety and exigent circumstances are relevant to deciding what disability accommodation is reasonable, just as “reasonable” tests are applied in any other case involving alleged disability discrimination. But there are times it is reasonable for a police officer to modify their approach given the disability-related needs of a person they are interacting with. Time matters. Distance matters. Knowledge of a disability matters. And a person’s own request for an accommodation matters. Here, the court focused on the allegation that Paul expressly requested a mental health professional while he remained behind a bathroom door and, at that point, there was no exigent issue of officer safety. The complaint further alleges that resources were available to respond to that request. The court concluded that the alleged failure to act on that request could plausibly support a claim of deliberate indifference under federal disability law. Mental-health clinicians, mobile crisis services, dispatch protocols, de-escalation practices and relationships between law enforcement and behavioral-health systems aren’t simply peripheral policy discussions. The allegations in this case illustrate why decisions about those systems can have life or death consequences when a crisis occurs. And this case makes something else visible. What this means for Montana A person in crisis may actually know what would help them. According to the complaint, Paul did not merely exhibit behavior that police were expected to interpret. He asked for a mental health professional. Later, he asked for a nurse. Police allegedly already knew about his mental-health disability. There is something powerful about a federal disability rights law requiring us to take that kind of self-knowledge seriously. Disabled people aren’t merely the subjects of crisis-response systems. They are people with knowledge about their own disabilities, their own needs, and what may help them. Paul used his voice. He asked for help. He asked for a mental health professional. Disability rights require that his voice matters. And when government refuses to listen, there must be accountability. Paul Rolfes’ death raises difficult questions about what government should do when a person with a mental health disability asks for help. It also raises a host of other questions. Who decides what help is available in the first place? Who decides whether a community has mental health professionals available to respond to a crisis? Who decides how those services are funded? Who writes the rules? Who decides when a mobile crisis response is used? Who determines what police, dispatchers, hospitals and providers are supposed to do? Systems Don’t Change Themselves.People Change Them. Who designs the system in which all these individual decisions are made? The answer to that last question should include you. We talk about “the mental health system” as if it were one enormous machine somewhere. It isn’t. It’s a collection of smaller decisions. Funding decisions. Legislative decisions. Agency rules. Medicaid policies. Contracts. Staffing decisions. Training. Eligibility requirements. Facility practices. Decisions about where services will exist and where they won’t. Each of those choices builds on the others. They accumulate until, together, they create that behemoth we call “the system.” You can influence those decisions to make the system work better for Montanans with mental illness. This is where people sometimes get intimidated. “The System” isn’t some mysterious thing You don’t need permission to participate Legislatures have procedures. Agencies speak in acronyms. Hearings have rules. Bills can be difficult to read. Everybody seems to know where they’re supposed to stand and when they’re supposed to talk. It would be easy to think that policymaking is something other people do. It isn’t. It is something you can do. And if you have a mental health disability and have experienced these systems yourself, you know things about what works and what doesn’t that no policymaker, provider, lawyer, or advocate could ever know. That is expertise. You do not need to be a lawyer, lobbyist, or policy professional to have something useful to contribute. You can: learn who represents you; follow a bill or watch a hearing; document what happened when you tried to get services; contact a legislator or submit public comment; tell your story to policymakers or reporters; or connect with other people experiencing the same problem and show that it is a pattern. And you don’t have to do all of those things. You just have to find somewhere to start. Before the next crisis The decisions that shape our response to a mental health crisis often begin long before anybody calls 911. They begin when we decide what services to fund. When we decide where those services will exist. When agencies write rules. When providers design programs. When legislatures establish budgets. When communities decide what kind of crisis-response infrastructure to build. And those decisions are made by people. Which means they can be influenced by people. Which means they can be changed. The lawsuit involving Paul Rolfes asks important questions about what happened during one encounter. The federal court has now concluded that the complaint alleges enough to allow its disability discrimination claims against the City of Helena to proceed. But systems advocacy asks us to look both backward and forward. Accountability asks what happened. Systems change asks what we need to change before it happens again. That’s work all of us can be part of. In the final installment of this year’s suicide prevention and mental health rights training series, Christa Gabriel, Public Policy Director at Disability Rights Montana, takes the intimidating phrase “systems change” and turns it into things ordinary people can actually do. That’s why we made this training Christa Gabriel explains how mental health services are funded in Montana, how state policy gets made and how to distinguish an individual problem from a systemic one. Then Christa Gabriel gets practical. How do you document a pattern? How do you find your legislators? How do you track a bill? What happens at a public hearing? How do you prepare testimony when you’ve only got a couple of minutes? How can people work together in a coalition? When can media help? And what can you do this week, this month, and during the next legislative session? This isn’t a training about becoming a professional advocate. It’s a training about recognizing that you already have something advocacy needs: knowledge of how these systems actually work in people’s lives. Your experience isn’t “just a story.” It is information decision-makers need. Get more resources for Mental Health policy advocacy at our Online Mental Health Rights Library: MH Policy Resources In Solidarity, David David Carlson, J.D. Executive Director Disability Rights Montana You’re currently a free subscriber to Life Beyond Compliance. Upgrading to paid subscriptions supports Disability Rights Montana’s work across Montana. Federal funding is no where near sufficient to meet the advocacy and culture change work that is needed. You can help fund the future you want to see! Upgrade to paid LIKE COMMENT RESTACK © 2026 Disability Rights Montana1022 Chestnut Street, Helena, MT 59601 Unsubscribe