In a win for two Minnesota Sex Offender Program patients left waiting for more than two years after being deemed eligible to move out of lockdown confinement, attorneys at Stoel Rives LLP and Dorsey & Whitney LLP recently secured a significant ruling requiring speedier state action on court-ordered transfers.

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled last month that the pair of civilly committed sex offenders "had a clearly established right" to be moved into a less restrictive environment "within a reasonable time" following decisions by an appeals panel ordering their transfer.

The decision comes more than three years after MSOP patients Ricky Lee McDeid and Shane P. Garry filed suit in November 2019 demanding the state take action on their transfer orders, and alleging that the commissioner of the Department of Human Services and the executive director of the MSOP had violated their due process rights by delaying the move.

While the two were eventually transferred prior to their case reaching the high court, their suit continues to play out as they seek monetary damages under federal civil rights law.

The state Supreme Court's ruling last month reversed a lower court's decision dismissing the case on grounds that the right to be moved into a less restrictive environment within a reasonable time was not clearly established when the transfer orders were issued.

"What we argued and what the Supreme Court recognized is the fact that rights have been clearly established for people under civil commitment," Stoel Rives partner Andrew J. Pieper, who represented the appellants pro bono with Dorsey & Whitney partner Roxanna V. Gonzalez, told Law360.

"The standard, effectively, is that people under civil commitment are typically treated as akin to a pretrial detainee who has maybe been arrested or charged and has lost some liberty interests in that respect, but they haven't lost all of them, unlike incarcerated individuals who have effectively lost all their civil liberties."

Pieper said the Minnesota Supreme Court's decision establishes a common-sense rule.

"In other words, when there is a court order mandating that the state take some action, the state must do so within a reasonable amount of time," he said.

Gonzalez said the case boils down to whether or not the state was required to comply with a court order.

"If the state had won its argument that it could comply with a court order when it felt like it or when it had the resources to do so, if ever, the impact that would have had on pro se litigants, economically disadvantaged litigants, and litigants of color would have been chilling," she told Law360. "With its opinion, the Minnesota Supreme Court made it clear that the state is held to the same standard as every Minnesotan subject to a court order — it must comply with a final court order."

The MSOP consists of two facilities: the Moose Lake facility, a medium security lockdown facility capable of holding approximately 1,000 men, and a less restrictive facility in St. Peter, known as Community Preparation Services, which is designated for individuals who have demonstrated significant change over the course of their commitment.

People designated as a sexually dangerous person or as having a sexual psychopathic personality are generally committed for treatment to a secure MSOP treatment facility for an indeterminate period of time.

According to the court's decision, McDeid was committed to Moose Lake in July 1999 after an Aitkin County judge deemed him a sexually dangerous person and a sexual psychopathic personality. Garry, meanwhile, was deemed a sexually dangerous person and sent to Moose Lake in April 2012.

After years of treatment, the two men eventually petitioned the Minnesota Commitment Appeals Panel to allow them to be transferred from Moose Lake to the CPS facility. Transfer orders for McDeid and Garry were ultimately issued by the panel in September 2017 and January 2018, respectively.

According to the Supreme Court's decision, the orders did not provide a specific date by which the transfers to CPS had to occur, and the state took no action to challenge the orders on appeal.

Despite the transfer orders, however, McDeid was not actually moved to CPS until December 2019, and Garry was not moved until July 2020.

In responding to the suit the two men lodged in November 2019, the state claimed it was shielded on grounds of qualified immunity.

Pieper noted that one of the state's arguments was that it had discretion to decide when to actually implement the court-ordered transfer.

It also presented what Pieper characterized as an "impossibility defense" that, even if the state was obligated to act on the order within a certain amount of time, "their hands were tied because there wasn't sufficient bed space for these guys at the less restrictive facility in St. Peter and the Legislature hadn't provided funding for an expansion of that facility."

A spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Human Services told Law360 in a statement that it had long struggled with capacity issues at the St. Peter facility.

"The safety and quality of care for MSOP clients is a top priority," the department said. "MSOP has contended with insufficient capacity in Community Preparation Services for years, which significantly impacts the ability to transfer clients into the program. We continue to lack sufficient beds and staff to meet the needs of all clients with approved transfers."

DHS added that it had submitted multiple requests to the Legislature over the last nine years to expand and renovate CPS, including seeking $21.5 million during the current legislative session to add 30 beds to the St. Peter campus.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has remanded the case back to the court of appeals to address the question it did not address: whether the patients sufficiently alleged violations of their due process rights.

Pieper said the Supreme Court's decision so far is an important step in eventually vindicating his clients' constitutional claims.

"Simply put, states do not have the right to unreasonably delay implementation of a court mandate," he said. "As lawyers, we are sworn to support the Constitution of the United States; this case is in keeping with and advances that oath."

Pieper said he believes the case will have broader implications outside the sex offender context.

"For example, as civilly committed patients, these two individuals are effectively wards of the state," he said. "If you think of other types of scenarios in which wards of the state could be put in a similar situation, you can see how a state government could be subject to a court order and simply drag its feet by saying, 'Well, there isn't enough funding,' or 'There isn't enough room,' or something like that."

He noted that children in the foster care system are also wards of the state.

"Let's say there's a juvenile court that's responsible for a case involving a foster child who has some type of significant special needs," Pieper said. "The state could say, 'If there isn't specific funding from the Legislature or if there isn't room in a classroom for that child, then we don't really need to do anything about it until the Legislature gives us money to do something.' And that strikes me as very wrong."

--Editing by Marygrace Anderson.

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