Deinstitutionalizing the Mentally Retarded in Maine: The Inevitable Face-Off with Zoning

In July 1978, agencies and officials of the State of Maine entered into a federal consent judgment which terminated a class action lawsuit that had dragged on for three years. The consent judgment in Wuori v. Zitnay detailed a comprehensive plan designed to bring about speedy and meaningful relief to the plaintiff class: mentally retarded citizens of Maine involuntarily confined to Pineland Center, Maine's principal institution for the mentally retarded, and certain others who were conditionally released from Pineland and in community placements. The relief granted was a right to be provided the least restrictive and most normal living conditions appropriate for each member of the class. The decree required that mentally retarded persons be moved from the centralized Pineland institution to small facilities integrated in the communities of Maine. In August 1981, the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine upheld a lower court determination that a proposed group home for the mentally retarded is not a single-family use permitted in a residential zone. As a result of the Law Court's decision in Penobscot Area Housing Development Corp. v. City of Brewer, the Wuori defendants' ability to implement the federal court mandate is made to depend upon the local municipality's receptivity to group homes as reflected in the municipality's definition of "family" in its zoning ordinance. The tremendous power and promise of a decree of the federal judiciary, redressing violations of constitutional rights, thus can be rendered dysfunctional by a state court applying a local zoning ordinance. This Comment explores the evolution of the deinstitutionalization movement in Maine, the effect of Wuori and Penobscot on that movement, and, finally, posits that federal-state judicial comity should have compelled a different result in Penobscot.