Missouri is illegally keeping people with mental health issues in jail, lawsuit says
The families of six people detained in jails across Missouri sued state health officials on Monday, alleging that Missouri is illegally allowing individuals with mental health issues to languish behind bars.
The class action lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, argues that Missouri is forcing people who cannot stand trial because of mental illness to remain in jail awaiting treatment for months — sometimes years — as their conditions worsen.
“Missouri’s jails have become de facto mental health wards, with terrible outcomes for both the mentally ill pretrial detainees and overwhelmed correctional staff and agencies,” the lawsuit said.
The suit’s allegations echo a 2023 investigation by The Star that found hundreds of individuals with mental health issues were stuck in jail due to a shortage of hospital beds. The individuals have been charged with crimes, often minor ones, but were found unfit to stand trial until they receive treatment.
The situation forces individuals into a type of legal limbo in which their cases can’t progress until they get treated — and they can’t receive treatment until a hospital bed becomes available, The Star found.
One man, Timothy Beckmann, died in the Jackson County Detention Center while awaiting treatment earlier this year.
A trio of civil rights groups, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, the MacArthur Justice Center and ArchCity Defenders, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the families. The suit alleges that Missouri is depriving the individuals of their constitutional rights.
The individuals who are stuck in jail across the state are only identified in the suit by their initials. Of the seven people, one is currently detained in Kansas City in the Jackson County Detention Center.
That individual was described in the lawsuit as M.R., a 31-year-old Black man with a history of mental health concerns, including schizophrenia and depression. After being arrested in April 2024, a judge found that M.R. was unfit to stand trial and committed him to the Missouri Department of Mental Health.
M.R. has been waiting 445 days for mental health treatment, the lawsuit said.
“While M.R. languishes in jail on DMH’s waitlist, his mental and emotional condition deteriorate,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit targets either the fact that they’ve remained in jail while awaiting treatment or Missouri’s inability to provide mental health evaluations in a timely fashion in violation of state and federal law.
The lawsuit names as defendants a roster of state health officials, including the Missouri Department of Mental Health, Director Valerie Huhn and members of the Missouri Mental Health Commission, which is in charge of appointing the health department’s director.
A spokesperson for DMH said in an email to The Star that the agency could not comment on pending litigation.
The Star previously found that a constellation of issues at state-run psychiatric hospitals contribute to the problem, including workforce woes, bed shortages and lack of funding.
The situation became so acute in 2023 that state lawmakers approved funding for a new, state-run mental health hospital in Kansas City to try to alleviate the bed shortage. However, that project is still years away from completion.
Monday’s lawsuit also takes aim at the wait times for individuals to receive treatment and move their cases along, alleging that Missouri has routinely violated the individuals’ rights. The waiting list of people stuck in jail has grown steadily over the past several years and is nearly at 500 people as of last month, according to the lawsuit.
“The state has a statutory and constitutional obligation to assess and treat all individuals that courts have deemed incompetent to stand trial in a timely manner,” Gillian Wilcox, the ACLU of Missouri’s director of litigation, said in a statement.
Missouri law requires the state to conduct competency evaluations within 60 days of a court order. However, the lawsuit alleges that those evaluations have often taken roughly six months.
Once those evaluations are completed, a person can be considered incompetent to stand trial. Those individuals are held in jail for an average of 14 months before receiving mental health treatment, the lawsuit said.
“The current status quo leaves some people who experience mental illness or disabilities trapped in judicial limbo and languishing in jail while the state fails to provide the necessary care to allow the detained person to advance through the judicial system,” said Wilcox.
This story was originally published November 24, 2025 at 2:34 PM.
