Several of the state’s most influential mental health advocacy groups have appealed a state court decision allowing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to eliminate a program they say is vital to their clients’ health and safety.

The original lawsuit (PDF), filed in December 2007 in Alameda Superior Court, charged that the Governor violated Proposition 63, now known as the Mental Health Services Act – the law passed by voters to expand mental health services in California.

The Governor eliminated the program that provided integrated services to homeless, mentally ill adults (the AB 2034 program) when he cut the program’s $55 million in funding through a line-item veto.  As a result, the AB 2034 programs in 34 of the state’s 58 counties were forced to shut down, leaving counties scrambling to find alternative funding or provide services through other programs. Many adults in the program have lost housing, employment, and treatment, and thousands more are at risk of losing them, the suit said.  The program, previously praised by the Governor as a national model for its success in helping this population, served nearly 5,000 people. 

In an attempt to lessen the blow of the governor’s veto, the Department of Mental Health made available a one-time, $64 million in unspent Proposition 63 administrative funds to cover the cost of services provided through AB 2034.

Plaintiffs argue that Proposition 63 was passed in November 2004 to raise new money to expand mental health services. They say that Proposition 63 expressly prohibits the use of its funds to pay for mental health services already in existence when the measure was passed. In addition, the $64 million was a stop-gap measure, available for only one year.

“By eliminating a program that paid the counties to provide an extensive array of mental health services for homeless adults,” plaintiffs argue in their appeal (PDF), filed Dec. 17, “ … the State ‘changed the structure of financing mental health services’” which is a violation of the Mental Health Services Act. The trial judge had ruled that it was not a violation because the counties were not required by the state to continue the program.

“The people of California passed the MHSA to improve the state’s patchwork mental health system” said NCYL Deputy Director Patrick Gardner, co-counsel in the case. “Eliminating proven mental health programs cuts at the heart of Prop 63, and jeopardizes the future of tens of thousands of Californians with unmet mental health needs.”

Plaintiffs include statewide advocacy groups as well as individual clients who credit the program with helping them quit drugs, attend college classes, or secure their own housing. All say that without the services provided through the program, they would be back on the street. The advocacy groups are the Mental Health Association in California, California Network of Mental Health Clients, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness California.

Plaintiffs are represented by Protection & Advocacy, Inc., Oakland, CA; Western Center on Law & Poverty, Los Angeles, CA; Mental Health Advocacy Services, Los Angeles, CA; National Center for Youth Law, Oakland, CA; and the law firm of Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin, San Francisco, CA.

The Governor, the Department of Mental Health, and Stephen Mayberg, the Department’s Director, are named as defendants in the suit.

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