The majority (Judges Paez and Forrest) and dissent (Judge Bea) disagree on whether the California Department of Corrections may have violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when it took away adult diapers from a 57-year old prisoner with spinal damage (alongside a prior stroke) who uses a wheelchair and who suffers from incontinence -- both Nos. 1 and 2. The majority says "Yes" whereas the dissent says "No."
At its core, Judge Bea's dissent relies on the fact that staff at the prison "reviewed [the patient's] medical records" and "were unable to find any evidence to sustain [his] claim that the [] incontinence supplies were medically necessary." It's an "adequate investigation," he says, to review some documents and to conclude therefrom that someone does not, in fact, involuntarily pee and poo in their bed. (Why someone would purportedly fake incontinence to obtain adult diapers -- hardly your typical prison currency -- is left unexplained.)
I assume that there are indeed some medical conditions that can be viewed on a CT or MRI or the like that may cause someone to become incontinent. But I doubt that every reason for incontinence can be so easily objectively verified. I would assume that the most powerful evidence of incontinence is the pee and/or poo in someone's bed, no?
So when -- as seemingly undisputed here -- someone is regularly soiling one's sheets, it seems very hard to me to argue that a doctor can legitimately say "Sorry, you don't actually need diapers, because I can't find any physical evidence that explains why you're doing what you're doing." If a doctor said that to a federal judge, for example, I'm fairly confident that the judge wouldn't say "Oh, okay then. I guess I'll just keep crapping my pants. Thanks for the help."
I would think that a fairly fundamental component of human decency is not being forced to wake up with pee and/or poop coating one's person. No?
