The bill would have prohibited all procedures that cause physical pain or deprivations meant to force behavioral change – so-called “aversive therapy” – to persons with disabilities, which includes students at a school for autistic and disabled students. 

A Massachusetts bill that would have banned an electric shocking device used to control behavior at a residential school near Boston for autistic and disabled students failed to advance out of committee before a legislative deadline, effectively killing the bill in the current legislative session.  Similar bills have been introduced, but allowed to die in the state legislature for more than a decade.

Massachusetts House bill 245, sponsored by State Representative Danielle Gregoire, called for prohibiting any procedure that causes “obvious signs of physical pain” or denies “a humane existence” – so-called “aversive therapy” – to persons with disabilities in the state.

The bill would have effectively banned the electric shocking device used for behavioral conditioning at the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), the only school in the nation to employ such a device.  JRC staff use the device to deliver electric shocks remotely to electrodes attached to the students’ arms, legs, or other parts of their bodies to force changes in their behavior.

A horrifying video of the procedure shows a JRC student strapped to a restraint table while being shocked, screaming, “Stop! Stop!” and “That hurts!”  The 18-year-old was shocked 31 times over seven hours for failing to obey an order and was hospitalized for more than a month following the incident, according to a lawsuit brought by his mother against JRC.  The case was settled out of court.

The harm from the devices is detailed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which for a second time is proposing to ban the device.

“These devices present a number of psychological risks including depression, anxiety, worsening of underlying symptoms, development of post-traumatic stress disorder, and physical risks such as pain, burns, and tissue damage,” the FDA wrote in its proposed regulatory rule. 

The FDA previously banned the device, but JRC prevailed in a lawsuit that found the FDA did not have the proper legal authority to do so.  In 2023, Congress amended federal law to give the FDA that authority, and in 2024, the FDA again began the process that is expected to result in a final rule in May that bans the device as used by JRC.

In 2013, the U.N. Special Rapporteur investigated the use of electric shock and restraints on JRC students and determined their rights “have been violated under the UN Convention against Torture and other international standards.”

The Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has actively advocated for years for an end to the practice, which it calls a human rights abuse.

Nancy R. Weiss, retired professor and co-founder of the National Leadership Consortium on Developmental Disabilities at the University of Delaware, points out that JRC students are electric shocked, but “you can’t use electric shock on prisoners, prisoners of war, or terrorists.”  

Language to prohibit use of the device is currently part of a more comprehensive bill, Massachusetts Senate bill 1394, which was recently reported favorably by the Senate committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery and referred to the committee on Health Care Financing. 

If the bill is passed with the language banning the device remaining intact, or the FDA finalizes a rule prohibiting the device, the long and disgraceful history of harm from the device will finally come to an end.