A lawsuit alleging that the Moore County Department of Social Services unlawfully institutionalized two siblings with intellectual disabilities will move forward, a federal judge in Winston-Salem has ruled.
Disability Rights NC filed the lawsuit last year on behalf of Moore County mother Rumina Slazas and her two children, referred to in court filings as J.S. and S.S.
The complaint alleged that DSS took custody of Slazas’ children while she underwent cancer treatment in 2022 and sent them to residential facilities rather than finding placement for them in an appropriate community setting.
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As Disability Rights NC attorney Holly Stiles sees it, Moore County’s actions violated the children’s civil rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act, as affirmed by the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Olmstead v. L.C.
That 1999 ruling held that unjustified segregation of people with disabilities constitutes discrimination and established guidelines for providing in-home and community services for disabled individuals.
Stiles told Carolina Public Press this is the first time that a county government is being held to account when it comes to their obligations regarding the Olmstead decision.
“This ruling also speaks to the fact that counties, when making choices of the services that are available, they too need to prefer services in the most integrated setting,” Stiles said.
The complaint states that in August 2022 Moore DSS took custody of Slazas’ teenage children, both of whom have significant intellectual disabilities, while Slazas was undergoing inpatient cancer treatment at Duke University Hospital.
Even after Slazas was declared in remission from cancer by her doctors and returned home, Moore County refused to return the children to her because DSS officials thought her cancer might return.
Rather than find community placements for the children, Moore DSS placed them in institutional settings. Slazas’ son, J.S., was sent to an intermediate care facility in Fayetteville and her nonverbal daughter, S.S., was eventually sent to a psychiatric residential treatment facility in South Carolina.
The lawsuit further claimed that Moore County abandoned S.S. at the UNC Health pediatric emergency department in Chapel Hill for nearly nine months while trying to have her placed at a psychiatric facility, before finding the one in South Carolina. That was despite UNC Health not accepting her for inpatient psychiatric admission and several psychiatric facilities refusing to accept her because she lacked a mental health condition.
Moore DSS eventually reunited the children with their mother in late 2023, more than a year after she was declared in “complete remission” from her cancer. According to the complaint, both children suffered mental and physical effects from their stays at the residential facilities.
Olmstead required public entities to provide services “in the most integrated setting” to people with disabilities when such placement is appropriate, the affected persons do not oppose such treatment and the placement can be reasonably accommodated.
The ruling is most often thought of as a decision which primarily affects state governments. The Supreme Court advised states to develop plans to transition people with disabilities into their respective communities.
Stiles said this lawsuit targets the “flip side of the coin” in the state-county dynamic. States might be obligated to make community-based services available, but up until now no legal action has required counties to choose those services for individuals in their custody.
Moore County’s attorneys argued in their motion to dismiss that the plaintiffs did not substantially show that community placements for the children could have been reasonably accommodated.
Disability Rights NC did name in its complaint several potential community-based placement options for J.S. and S.S., including the home of one of S.S.’s teachers who had previously been approved for temporary placement and a local group home.
The complaint also stated that S.S. had been approved for an emergency slot on the NC Innovations waiver, which is a Medicaid program for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities to receive community-based services.
Judge Thomas D. Schroeder denied Moore County’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, writing in a July 23 order that the plaintiffs demonstrated a “plausible claim,” which is all that is needed at this point in the litigation process.
However, Schroeder signaled that he was dubious of Disability Rights NC’s claim that a specific community-based placement was ready and able to accept either of the children, calling its cited examples “far from robust.”
“Though the County makes a credible argument that identifying a specific, available option would discourage unmerited litigation, it has not provided any case law that clearly sets out such a requirement at this early pleading stage,” he wrote.
The lawsuit now hinges on two claims — one states that Moore County discriminated against Slazas by not reuniting her with her children as quickly as they could have, and the other is the Olmstead claim regarding the children’s placements.
Both parties have entered into a months-long discovery period during which they will exchange information through written inquiries and depositions.
After the discovery period, the case could proceed to a trial by jury, or a party might submit a motion for summary judgment in which the judge would make a final ruling on the case. Stiles said she expects this case to stretch into 2026 before being resolved.
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