Building a better Baker Act, one legislative session at a time
The Baker Act was groundbreaking when it first passed in the early 1970s because it created new protections for individuals with mental illness while getting them treatment. Today, it is still a very important part of Florida law for that same reason.
The Baker Act allows individuals believed to have a mental illness who are dangerous to oneself or others to be deprived of liberty so that they can be medically assessed and stabilized. It’s a complicated law, and it interacts with many other laws governing schools, nursing homes and hospitals — places where individuals may be found in serious need of help.
How the law applies, especially where children are involved, has been a major source of controversy, and that was one reason, back in 2017, I passed my first piece of legislation, House Bill 1183, in the Florida House of Representatives. The bill created a Baker Act Task Force to investigate the use of the Baker Act on minors, with particular focus on children sent for medical evaluation by school authorities. I felt as though I had hit a significant milestone in just my first year in the Legislature.
The task force met for six months after the bill was signed into law and provided a list of recommendations to the Legislature.
Once these recommendations were provided, I knew my work on mental health for minors was not done. To the contrary, it had only begun.
In 2019, I filed bills based on several of the task force’s recommendations, House Bills 361 and 363, both of which were passed and signed into law. I followed that up in the 2020 legislative session with House Bill 945, which requires the Department of Children and Families and the Agency for Health Care Administration to identify children who are frequent users of crisis stabilization services and to meet the behavioral health needs of such children. This bill, signed into law by the governor, also created protocols for Mobile Response Teams for de-escalation of behavioral health events at schools, a measure lauded in a statewide grand jury report assessing our state’s mental health framework.
This year, the Baker Act has continued to be one of my top issues as I proposed House Bill 829, on operation and administration of the Baker Act.
House Bill 829 requires the Department of Children and Families to update and maintain key information resources that help the hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers, school administrators, clinicians, facility directors and others who implement the Baker Act to understand the law and act correctly. It was also passed and signed by the governor, and it will preserve an individual’s liberty while ensuring those who truly need treatment will get it.
Looking forward to my final year in the House of Representatives before being term-limited, I plan on continuing my quest to improve the mental health framework in our state. I filed another bill on this subject this year that did not pass, which would increase behavioral health performance requirements for Medicaid managed care plans covering children. In 2024, re-filing this bill and making sure children get the help they need will be among my top priorities.