The possible action stems from a separate federal civil rights suit filed by James Flavey Coy Brown in Nevada, who alleges the state put him on a one-way bus to northern California after discharging him from a treatment facility. He's seeking class-action status for as many as 1,500 others.
The San Francisco Chronicle has more:
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera is demanding that Nevada reimburse California cities and counties for treatment of about 500 indigent psychiatric patients who were given one-way bus tickets to the Golden State in recent years.
Those costs include about $500,000 that Herrera says San Francisco spent on medical care, housing and other aid for 20 people shipped here in a practice sometimes called Greyhound therapy.
If Nevada doesn't pay up, Herrera is threatening a class-action lawsuit. He alleges patients were released from a psychiatric hospital in Las Vegas and given one-way tickets to his state. According to KTVU, two dozen of those who got off in San Francisco were "broke, homeless, and mentally ill."
The Chronicle notes the practice — called "patient dumping" or "Greyhound therapy" — has been rumored, but never officially confirmed as a way for states and cities to move their
"I don't think there is any doubt that it occurred in this case," Herrera told The Chronicle. "Here you have a very well-documented case of a state-sanctioned patient dumping scheme."
According to a Nevada Health and Human Services summary from April, the Las Vegas psychiatric facility Rawson-Neal saw more than 31,000 people admitted in a five-year span. Of those, 1,473 received bus transport out of the state, according to KTVU.