A federal court of appeals ruled on Tuesday that a Massachusetts school for children with disabilities can continue administering electric shocks to its students.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had previously banned the electric shock treatment used at the Judge Rotenberg Center, Canton. The institution created the controversial treatment to correct aggressive or self-harming behaviour in adults and children.
The school, along with a group of parents and guardians of students, had challenged the previous FDA ban. The court of appeals for the DC Circuit found that the treatment falls into medical regulations and therefore is beyond the FDA’s remit of control.
“With the treatment, these residents can continue to participate in enriching experiences, enjoy visits with their families and, most importantly, live in safety and freedom from self-injurious and aggressive behaviours,” the school said in a statement following the ruling.
“We have and will continue to fight to keep our loved ones safe and alive and to retain access to this life-saving treatment of last resort,” parents of the students added in a statement.
The Judge Rotenberg Center, Canton, is the only school in the US that uses electric shock treatment on its students, and has suffered heavy criticism from disability rights advocates, including Mental Disability Rights International (DRI) and the United Nations, which considers the practice “torture”.
“The idea of using electric shocks to torture children has been recognised as unconscionable around the world,” DRI’s president, Laurie Ahern, told the Guardian.
“The real torture is what these children are subjected to if they don’t have this programme,” institute and treatment founder Matthew Israel previously said to ABC News.
“They’re drugged up to the gills with drugs that cause them to be so sedated that they essentially sleep all day.”
There are around 300 students, including 48 overnight residents, at the Judge Rotenberg Center. According to Massachusetts News, about 55 of these are approved for the Graduated Electronic Decelerator shock devices, which remotely administer a powerful shock to the wearer’s skin.
“One client of ours is a woman who hit her head against the wall so many times that her retinas were detached,” said Attorney Max Stern, who represents the parents and guardians of Judge Rotenberg Center.
“It was not until she went to multiple various other institutions, not until she got to JRC and got this treatment that she was able to get this behaviour under control so she could have surgery to make it possible for her to see again,” Stern told Massachusetts News.
However, a 2006 report by the New York State Education Department found that the device was regularly used for minor disobedience and “behaviours that are not aggressive, health dangerous or destructive, such as nag*ing, swearing and failing to maintain a neat appearance”.
The report also found no evidence that the school “considers the potential negative effects, such as depression or anxiety, that may result from the use of aversive behavioural strategies with certain individual students”.
The school claims on its website that it “has provided very effective education and treatment to both emotionally disturbed students with conduct, behaviour, emotional, and/or psychiatric problems, as well as those with intellectual disabilities or on the autism spectrum”.
The Independent has contacted Judge Rotenberg Center for further comment.
This case was decided by a three-judge panel. The two judges who signed the majority opinion were Trump and Reagan appointees; the dissenting judge was an Obama appointee.
Stuff like this is why abandoning electoral politics is foolish. You can't be a materialist but ignore a whole species of politics that has a material effect on people's lives. It's hard to convince people that you really give a give a damn about them if you write off meaningful outcome differences like this with "well the two parties are the same on a lot of other topics, so why bother?" Joking about harm reduction is a lot less funny when you're confronted with situations where Democrats do in fact harm less than Republicans.
Leftists should be organizing our workplaces, participating in direct action, and working whatever other angles we can find. But we should also vote -- something that takes relatively little time (compared to labor organizing) and involves zero risk (compared to direct action).
The fecking courts have been held over our heads for the longest time. Somehow it's our fault that Clinton and Mondale ran shitty centrist campaigns. I'll fecking vote, but I'm not spending more than ten minutes of my time for horrible conservative Democrat candidates.
Maybe people keep bringing up courts because courts have a huge impact on what laws we live under
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Such as? Democrats suck, but Republicans are worse pretty much across the board.
These people just want to rationalize being too left to vote. They're cooler than you! Deal with it! :big-cool:
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The harsh sentences for guns + drugs are more a product of the War on Drugs than anything, and there's only one party that's taken significant steps to end that.
Besides, gun control is a lot more bipartisan than Republicans like to admit, especially where it intersects with the opportunity to lock up poor people or people of color. You can find a bunch of Democratic district attorneys who aren't prosecuting marijuana possession, but you can't find a single Republican district attorney who isn't prosecuting gun possession.
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Missouri has all sorts of state-level restrictions on gun ownership. Why aren't these state legislators removing those? Why are they instead attempting to nullify federal gun laws, something so blatantly unconstitutional that even the right-wing court system is likely to shoot it down? Keep in mind that 90% of criminal cases are non-federal, so even if they're somehow successful this is the worst possible place to start.
The answer is that this is red meat for their base, not a sincere attempt to significantly roll back gun restrictions. You might also recall that a few years ago Republicans held the presidency, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court, and they didn't dismantle the same federal gun laws these Missouri chuds are performatively criticizing now.
I don't want to have a massive struggle session about this. But you do know what the electoral system and the courts are stacked against the people.
I'm pro voting. I'd just veer away from blaming something on the people, when the fucking owners of the world are clearly to blame.
I absolutely agree the blame shouldn't fall on the people -- I don't think I suggested otherwise. My point is only that elections do have material impacts on people's lives, so leftists shouldn't ignore them.
Obama judges bottled up for eight years, because Dems insisted on allowing appointments to be filibustered.
Trump judges rubber stamped by McConnell because he doesn't care about anything except winning.
Citizen residents told to Obey The Law over and over again, while comically corrupt police and bureaucracy abuse their offices. Then, when a Republican gets into office, the only remedy on offer is :vote: and when it comes to community organization we get told :maybe-later-kiddo:
Electoralism absent direct action is fucking worthless. Doctors who practice this abysmal form of abuse should fear for their lives, absent any kind of government intervention.
Courts have always been screwing people over. Voting isn't going to do that. That was probably a Trump judge and not an Obama judge because Obama couldn't even appoint judges. It doesn't matter who you vote for, there will always be some contrived explanation or scenario for why the bad thing has to happen.
Except there was an Obama judge on the panel, who voted against this.
And they were in the minority. Like they always will be.
Not even blinking when you find out you were completely wrong, huh?
The predecessor to the Trump appointee was Janice Roger Brown, Wikipedia says "Her nomination to the Court of Appeals was stalled for nearly two years as part of Democratic opposition to appointments made by George W. Bush." Her nomination was stalled for literally two years but she still got in. Then she retired and handed it over to another Republican. The decision literally would have been the same if Clinton was president. And above you can see that the Congress could have just blocked a Clinton appointee and waited to install a Republican anyways, since we're basically in an eternal Republican majority in the Senate (which exists because the ruling class wants it that way). Capitalists want the courts to be stacked conservative, which means they simply will be.
Or am I wrong, what part of this scenario would have changed in any way whatsoever if you :vote: for Democrats? You gonna get more Democratic Senators elected? Go ahead, voting for senators is fine. You're gonna get a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress? All you're doing is playing that same game of thinking anything is going to happen through the existing system. If it looks like Democrats could possibly do anything useful they would simply throw the thing to Republicans (like they have done over and over).
Democrats controlled the Senate all of Obama's first term and half of his second, and control it now. The suggestion that Democrats don't get to appoint judges is utter nonsense, considering it's happening right now under Biden.
So yes, you're completely wrong.
Like 5 people have been appointed so far lol and they've been in session for half a year. Wikipedia says they've got like 63 to 100 to appoint. And an overwhelming number got appointed by Trump because they were blocked by Republicans during Obama's terms.
Seven judges have been appointed in the last month. At that pace they'd hit 100 before the midterm elections. And again, you claimed Democrats couldn't get anyone through, which is flat-ass wrong regardless of how fast judges are getting confirmed.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about. No investigation, no right to speak.
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But you're right, this is a small example. Luckily there are much bigger examples of outcome differences, like a dozen or so Democratic states legalizing marijuana -- probably the most significant criminal justice achievement since the 60s.
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