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The group Disability Rights Oregon yesterday filed a new lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Portland against the Oregon Department of Human Services and agency director Clyde Saiki.
The lawsuit alleges that last September, without warning or explanation, DHS sharply reduced in-home services it provided for Oregonians who need help with "eating, food preparation, toileting, communication, behavioral assistance, medication administration, and bathing."
DHS pays for those services with federal Medicaid funds and apportions time to patients with what the lawsuit calls "an opaque needs assessment tool."
“The arbitrary manner in which [recipients] were notified of the slashed supports, without a meaningful explanation of the reasons for reduced supports, violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the lawsuit says.
More than 8,000 adults and 3,000 children received in-home services between 2015 and 2017, Disability Rights says. It will seek class-action status for its clients.
“In-home care support is absolutely critical to keeping people with intellectual and developmental disabilities out of institutions and living in their family homes,” said Tom Stenson, attorney with Disability Rights Oregon in statement. “By cutting these services, DHS increases the risk of isolation and segregation in violation of one of the central tenets of the Americans with Disabilities Act: the right of people with disabilities to live in the most integrated setting possible.”
The lawsuit seeks to have the state restore the level of services the plaintiffs and other affected Oregonians received prior to DHS changing service levels on Sept. 1, 2016.
The Oregon Department of Justice, which will represent DHS in court, does not comment on pending litigation.