Cleburne and the Pursuit of Equal Protection for Individuals With Mental Disorders.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution has been the foundation for judicial rulings against discriminatory laws affecting racial minorities, women, and other groups. However, it has had only limited application in mental health law, even though individuals with mental disorders have been subjected to long-standing discrimination in many contexts. In the present day, we have become accustomed to living in an era of judicial conservatism and accept as the norm that courts do not recognize individuals with mental disorders as requiring constitutional protections against discrimination. Conservative attitudes toward the rights of individuals with mental disorders have not always prevailed. In the 1970s and 1980s, mental health law was in flux, and the federal courts were active in expanding the rights of those with mental disabilities. With regard to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, the critical turning point occurred a generation ago. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in City of Cleburne, Texas v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc. One commentator has described the Cleburne decision as the “largest constitutional ‘moment’ for disability law” (Ref. 2, p 529). In Cleburne, the Court ruled that intellectual disability did not constitute a quasi-suspect classification under the Fourteenth Amendment, a status that would have provided robust judicial protection against discriminatory laws. Cleburne has been little discussed in recent years, but the ruling has had a substantial impact on the rights of those with mental disorders. In this editorial, I review the Cleburne ruling and its influence on the Court’s subsequent decisions, which have affected not only individuals with intellectual disabilities, but also those with mental and physical disabilities.