Florida made it easier to involuntarily commit people. A new lawsuit says it’s violating the law.

On Wednesday, the nonprofit organization Disability Rights Florida sued the Florida Department of Children and Families, claiming that the state agency failed to collect data and compile comprehensive annual reports on the people it’s involuntarily committing.

Florida’s Baker Act, which first passed in 1971, has required specific data—including the length of commitments and the diagnoses of those committed—to be collected since 2007. But it hasn’t been doing that, according to Disability Rights Florida. What available data does show, however, is that children with alleged mental health issues in Florida are involuntarily committed at higher rates than children in other states under similar laws. From 2020 to 2021, around one in five people involuntarily committed under Florida’s Baker Act was 18 or younger. In 2020, Florida involuntarily committed a 6-year-old with ADHD, a case that made national news.

To be committed under the Florida’s Baker Act, which is officially known as the Florida Mental Health Act, three criteria need to be met: a person must refuse a voluntary exam, be believed to have a mental illness, and be deemed a threat to themselves or others. After an initial hold of up to 72 hours, the person can be forced to continue to have involuntary inpatient or outpatient treatment by a judge for up to six months, and this can be extended again at the judge’s discretion.

“The Baker Act requires that DCF track important facts about how involuntary psychiatric care is used, like how long the average patient stays in a receiving facility,” said Sam Boyd, Southern Poverty Law Center senior attorney in a press release. SPLC and the Florida Health Justice Project are representing Disability Rights Florida in its lawsuit. “Its failure to do so interferes with Disability Rights Florida’s responsibility to protect and advocate for individuals subject to involuntary psychiatric examination.” 

While the issues that Disability Rights Florida is alleging with data collection did not start under Governor Ron DeSantis, changes to the Baker Act have happened under him. DeSantis approved legislation this past June that would make it easier for police officers to put people on an involuntary psychiatric hold.

DeSantis has previously claimed that involuntary commitments would stop mass shootings. However, research largely suggests that some mass shooters’ having a mental health diagnosis is more often coincidental than a contributing factor to such violence.

A 2021 SPLC report found that the use of the Baker Act has outpaced the increase of mental health diagnoses in the state, especially for children. “This explosion in Baker Act use has coincided with a drastic increase in police presence in schools,” the report notes, “suggesting that the Baker Act is being used punitively in some cases, like juvenile arrests and incarceration, to target and remove children that teachers, administrators, and school police perceive as uncontrollable or undesirable.” SPLC highlighted that at Palm Beach schools during the 2019-2020 school year, 40 percent of students involuntarily committed were Black, despite making up 28 percent of the student population.

Involuntary commitments may also play a role in how forthcoming people may be about their mental health. One small 2019 study, for instance, found that people were less likely to want to disclose concerning psychiatric symptoms, such as suicidal ideations, to a mental health provider after an involuntary commitment.

The Florida Department of Children and Families did not reply to a request for comment on the lawsuit. The lawsuit, which the state has not responded to yet, requests that the court require the state agency to start collecting better data and compile annual reports.