BANGOR, Maine — A federal judge on Tuesday found Bangor’s ordinance regulating methadone clinics discriminatory but stopped short of issuing a preliminary injunction that would have allowed the Hogan Road facility to expand immediately.
Penobscot County Metro Treatment Center in August sued Bangor in U.S. District Court, two weeks after the City Council voted 7-2 to deny the clinic’s request to expand from 300 to 500 patients.
The lawsuit alleged that the ordinance violated the Americans with Disabilities Act because it discriminated against people suffering from drug addictions. The complaint called on the judge to overturn the city’s decision and allow the expansion to move forward.
“For the ordinance to single out methadone clinics and devise special rules to apply to them, as opposed to all other types of clinics, is facially discriminatory,” U.S. District Judge John Woodcock wrote in his 31-page decision.
He said that Bangor’s ordinance unfairly singles out methadone over other treatment methods for regulation.
“Under Bangor’s ordinance, for example, a physician’s office next door to Penobscot [County] Metro’s clinic would be free to dispense Suboxone to opioid dependent patients without complying with Chapter 93 of the Bangor ordinance, yet Penobscot [County] Metro because it dispenses methadone, a different, but equally legal type of opioid treatment medication, would be subject to [the law],” Woodcock said.
In denying the preliminary injunction, the judge found that there are at least 60 open slots at the city’s other two methadone treatment clinics so patients would not be denied treatment and would not suffer the irreparable harm the law required.
On Tuesday, the clinic’s attorney, John Doyle of Portland, urged the council to act promptly to allow the clinic to expand in light of Woodcock’s ruling.
“It is now critical that the city council move quickly to allow Penobscot [County] Metro to expand to allow addicts to rebuild their lives,” Doyle said in an email. “With opioid addiction at epidemic levels, patients must have treatment options readily available to them. Because Penobscot [County] Metro is at capacity and has a significant wait list, the decision not to issue a preliminary injunction at this stage means that the clinic will be forced to continue to turn away people in urgent need of critical care and ready to enter treatment.”
The city argued in answer to the lawsuit that the ordinance complied with the Americans with Disabilities Act and that no individual had claimed to have been harmed as a result of the council’s decision.
“We are very pleased that the court agreed with our position that a preliminary injunction was unnecessary in this matter,” City Council Chairman Joseph Baldacci said Tuesday afternoon. “Any further comment would need to come from the city’s attorneys.”
Efforts to reach the city’s attorneys were unsuccessful Tuesday.
Baldacci and other councilors opposed the clinic’s proposed expansion in Bangor and suggested that Penobscot County Metro look into opening clinics in other parts of the state.
Bangor is home to three methadone treatment centers, licensed to have up to 1,500 patients total. That’s more than any other community in the state, and as many as three southern Maine communities combined. There is no methadone clinic north of Bangor.
Officials with Colonial Metro, Penobscot County Metro’s parent company, countered that opening a smaller clinic elsewhere would be cost-prohibitive, and that an expansion of treatment in Bangor could be done quickly and start helping people in the region in weeks rather than months or years.
Under the city ordinance, consideration of a methadone clinic expansion must focus on a few main questions: Is the property adequate? Can it hire and retain staff? Is there a demonstrated need for services? Are the services provided where they’re needed?
Councilors Gibran Graham and Sarah Nichols cast “yes” votes, arguing that Penobscot County Metro and Colonial Metro had adequately addressed these questions and proven there was a need for expanded service in Bangor. The seven other councilors indicated they felt that burden wasn’t met.
BDN writer Nick McCrea contributed to this report.