JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Today, the MacArthur Justice Center, alongside ArchCity Defenders and the ACLU of Missouri filed a class action lawsuit against the Missouri Department of Mental Health (DMH) for failing its legal duties to provide adequate treatment to people living with serious mental illness and disabilities during pretrial detainment after having been deemed incompetent to proceed to trial. The federal lawsuit was filed in the Western District’s Central Division.

Missouri law requires competency evaluations to be conducted within 60 days of a court order. According to obtained documents, it often takes approximately six months for someone to be evaluated. Moreover, nearly 500 people who have been assessed as incompetent to stand trial languish in jail without treatment, waiting to be transferred to DMH. On average, these individuals are held for 14 months before receiving the mental health treatment to restore their ability to participate in their criminal case. Some are even held in jail for longer than the maximum time they would receive if they were convicted of the charges they face.

“DMH continues to fail hundreds of Missourians living with serious mental illness, leaving them to languish in county jails without access to treatment, where they stand a heightened risk of decompensating or worse,” said Amy Malinowski, co-director of the MacArthur Justice Center’s Missouri office. “Our clients and hundreds like them are left helpless, caged, and abandoned by DMH. This betrayal of Missourians must end now.”

DMH Director Huhn herself has described the waitlist for competency services as a “critical issue” and yet it has only worsened over recent years. According to DMH’s testimony before the Missouri legislature, the waitlist has grown by a third since September 2024 and almost 88% since September 2023. As of May 5, 2025, 230 people waited in jail to be assessed by DMH, and another 430 individuals already deemed not competent to stand trial were detained in jails across the state waiting for treatment DMH has been court-ordered to provide. By October 2025, the number of people waiting for restoration treatment reached nearly 500.

“There is something deeply wrong with a state that always finds money to keep people in jail but cannot find money to provide the basic mental health treatment that our most vulnerable citizens are constitutionally entitled to.” said Maureen Hanlon, managing attorney for civil rights litigation at ArchCity Defenders. “True public safety would be providing care and support to families like those of our plaintiffs who are desperate to get their loved ones the treatment they need.”

“The state has a statutory and constitutional obligation to assess and treat all individuals that courts have deemed incompetent to stand trial in a timely manner,” said Gillian Wilcox, Director of Litigation at the ACLU of Missouri. “The current status quo leaves some people who experience mental illness or disabilities trapped in judicial limbo and languishing in jail while the state fails to provide the necessary care to allow the detained person to advance through the judicial system.”

Read more about the case here.

For more information or to speak with an expert, please contact:
Jasmine Razeghi at jasmine.razeghi@macarthurjustice.org
Z Gorley at zgorley@archcitydefenders.org
Tom Bastian at tbastian@aclu-mo.org