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RDB In The News
RDB Attorneys Continue To Fight On Behalf Of Methadone Treatment Center
7/1/2008
RDB attorneys returned to federal district court today to fight for A Helping Hand’s right to keep its Slade Avenue methadone treatment clinic open in Pikesville, Md.
After a 2002 Baltimore County ordinance preventing licensed medical clinics from operating within 750 feet of residences was successfully overturned in the district court in August of 2006, RDB and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland represented A Helping Hand on appeal of that ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in an oral argument on December 4, 2007. In its decision, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s finding that the clinic had standing to assert a claim under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which bars discrimination in the provision of public services, based on the injuries it suffered as a result of discrimination by the County against the clinic’s patients. With this decision the Fourth Circuit joins three other Circuits in finding that methadone treatment centers have standing to assert Title II claims.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed the judgment for the clinic on its due process claim, but reversed the judgment for the clinic on the ADA claims on the ground that the district court erred in deciding the issue of whether the County regarded the clinic’s patients as disabled as a matter of law instead of submitting that issue to the jury. The Court remanded for a determination of the appropriate scope of injunctive relief for the clinic on the due process claim and re-trial of the ADA claims, if necessary.
A Helping Hand seeks a permanent injunction that would keep the county from enforcing the zoning ordinance against this clinic’s location. RDB attorneys asked the County to include in the injunction a clause that would permanently enjoin the County from further interfering with the clinic’s location. Relocation would raise significant difficulties for the clinic, which was given state and local regulatory permission to operate only at its current site. District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake’s judgment is expected to rule on the injunction soon.
Read coverage of the hearing in the Maryland Daily Record.
Learn more about the case.
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