Court to Rule on Rights of Mentally Retarded

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether the Constitution bars a state from forcibly confining mentally retarded adults in state homes without giving each a full hearing.

The decision will come in a widely watched Kentucky case, which could clarify the rights of the nation’s retarded persons. Until 1988, Kentucky officials had kept retarded adults in state facilities based on a request from their parents. These confinements were deemed “voluntary.”

But in a series of ground-breaking lawsuits, a class of mentally retarded persons challenged these procedures and won the right to hearings before they were confined.

State officials, however, have continued to insist that they should not be required to go through “confused, complex, unnecessarily expensive and time-consuming procedures” before placing each retarded adult in a state facility.

Earlier Supreme Court rulings have accorded mentally ill persons the right to a full hearing before they can be involuntarily confined. The 14th Amendment says that a state may not deprive any person of “liberty without due process of law.”

But Kentucky officials told the high court that those procedural standards should not be applied equally to the mentally retarded because “mental retardation is a permanent condition. It cannot be cured or treated.” By contrast, they said, a mental illness may come and go, so courts need be more cautious about involuntarily confining such persons.

Attorneys for the state also said that parents should play a key role in deciding whether their retarded children should be kept in a state facility.

In June, however, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that once a retarded person becomes an adult, the parents no longer are entitled to speak for their child. The high court also will reconsider that conclusion in the case (Heller vs. Doe, 92-351).

In a second case from Kentucky, the justices let stand a state law giving grandparents the right to visit their grandchildren (King vs. King, 92-381). Most states have similar laws, attorneys told the court.

But Stewart and Anne King, the parents of a 5-year-old daughter, asked the high court to rule that such laws infringe on their constitutional rights over their child.

The Kings once lived rent-free in a home owned by Stewart King’s father, W. R. King. But when the senior King wrangled with his son and accused him of being lazy, the son and wife moved away. They also refused to allow the grandfather to visit his granddaughter.

He in turn went to court and won a judge’s order allowing him to visit Jessica twice a week, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The law creates a right to such visitations as long as they are deemed in the best interest of the child.

But Stewart and Anne King appealed, contending that this law should be invalidated.