With the Oregon State Hospital continuing to violate court-ordered time limits for admitting criminal defendants, one of the groups that brought the case against the psychiatric institution wants a federal court to limit who can go to the state hospital and how long they can stay.
In a motion filed with the U.S. District Court on Tuesday, March 17, Disability Rights Oregon is asking the judge to stop permitting misdemeanor and low-level felony defendants from being admitted to the hospital for inpatient treatment, a request it previously made in January only to be denied by the judge.
Criminal defendants deemed mentally ill are ordered to the state hospital for what’s known as “restoration services” so that they can answer questions adequately enough to be considered competent to “aid and assist” in their defense. The organization argues that reducing the number of aid-and-assist patients assigned to the hospital, most of whom are facing misdemeanor charges, would help the hospital comply with the court order to admit patients within a week of being assigned to its care.
The group also wants the court to rule against most exceptions to the institution’s discharge deadlines adopted in a new law, which it says keep patients in the institution longer than necessary. The exceptions were adopted in response to concerns that discharging patients who continued to be ill could represent a danger to themselves and to the public.
Eliminating unnecessary exceptions is needed “to enforce the constitutional rights of pretrial detainees languishing in jail for court ordered services,” according to the group’s filing.
Meanwhile, state health officials say they are reducing delays in admitting patients to the state hospital, but a new law could complicate things.
In a new report filed in federal court Monday, March 16, Oregon Health Authority leaders reported that as of March 11, patients waited in jail an average of 15 days after being evaluated before being admitted to the state psychiatric hospital. That’s down from 22 days in December, but still twice as long as the 7-day maximum the court set in place to protect the civil rights of defendants and prevent them from languishing behind bars without care. (For comparison, the equivalent wait times in Missouri are 14 months, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed there.)
The filings represent the latest development in the hospital’s ongoing legal entanglements. In June, the federal judge overseeing the case found state officials to be in contempt of court and issued fines of $500 a day for each patient who waits longer than seven days before being admitted to the hospital.
Patient wait times fluctuate throughout the year and are typically higher during the winter months, according to state health officials. The hospital was assigned, on average, about 100 new aid-and-assist orders each month in 2025. Aid-and-assist patients occupy the majority of the beds split between the state hospital’s two facilities.
But the situation with hospital admissions could be complicated by changes made last year by House Bill 2005. The wide-ranging omnibus bill combined multiple proposals to modify the state’s behavioral health care system, putting into law discharge deadlines for the hospital and other changes. The changes drew a mix of opposition and support among mental health advocates, hospitals, public safety officials, and local governments.
The bill echoed the federal judge’s endorsement of controversial discharge deadlines for patients admitted to the state hospital, but also allowed for pauses and extensions in those time frames.
Gov. Tina Kotek supported the bill, but she and Oregon Health Authority officials are concerned that too many extensions to the discharge deadlines would undermine compliance with the court’s 7-day admission requirement.
“Until we have adequate capacity, even having a few community partners treat these timelines as a de facto longer restoration limit for a majority or even a large fraction of cases will push us out of compliance,” Kotek wrote when she signed HB2005 in July.
In their report to the court, state health officials said they did not have sufficient data to determine the impact of HB 2005 on the hospital at this time, but they indicated Kotek would pursue changes to the law in the 2027 session.
According to the health officials report, Kotek’s office has provided the court monitor in the case with a six-month plan “to guide development of new legislation to follow HB 2005.”
The court filing said that state hospital officials are setting up a new unit to comply with another provision of HB 2005 requiring regular evaluations of criminal defendants committed to psychiatric care.
This article was republished with permission from The Lund Report, an independent nonprofit health news organization based in Oregon. Editor Nick Budnick can be reached at [email protected].
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