346
Souter, J., dissenting
ill, and there are no apparent differences of therapeutic regimes that would plausibly explain less rigorous commitment standards for those alleged to be mentally retarded than for those alleged to be mentally ill.7
III
With respect to the involvement of family members and guardians in the commitment proceeding, the Court holds it to be justified by the fact that mental retardation "has its onset during a person's developmental period," while mental illness "may arise or manifest itself with suddenness only after minority." Ante, at 329. The Court suggests that a mentally ill person's parents may have "ceased to provide care and support" for him well before the onset of illness, whereas parents are more likely to have retained connection with a retarded son or daughter, whose "proper course of treatment" may depend on matters related to "observations made in a household setting." Ibid.
These suggested distinctions, if true, would apparently not apply to guardians, whose legal obligations to protect the persons and estates of their wards would seem to require as much connection to the one class of people as to the other.
7 Petitioner also argues that mental retardation is different from most cases of mental illness in being a permanent condition that may require a lifetime of care. See Brief for Petitioner 31. But petitioner completely fails to explain how the permanence of the condition or the likely need of lifetime care can rationally justify a regime in which those alleged to require institutionalization based on mental retardation face a greater risk of erroneous curtailment of liberty than those who are alleged to require it based on mental illness. The distinction proffered by the State (accepting it to be factually accurate and not based merely on stereotype) cuts quite the other way. The possibility that a condition once thought to justify commitment will last a lifetime suggests that a person committed to an institution on the basis of mental retardation is less likely to regain his liberty than one institutionalized on some other basis. If this could rationally justify any disparity in commitment standards, it could only be in requiring stricter protection in mental retardation cases than in those based on mental illness, not the other way around.
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