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Freeborn County Sheriff Ryan Shea announced on Facebook Monday he is joining legal action against the state of Minnesota to seek a temporary restraining order and injunction to prevent a new state law from going into effect.

The law, set to take effect Tuesday, requires Minnesota jails to continue to administer the same prescription medication prescribed to inmates prior to their confinement. 

“While that seems innocent enough, there could be harmful and potentially deadly consequences to it,” Shea said. 

He said once a person is in custody at the jail, their medical care becomes the responsibility of a licensed medical professional at the facility. The county contracts with Advanced Correctional Healthcare, which has doctors, nurses and other providers on staff, who he says are qualified to provide care. 

“This law takes away their ability to practice medicine using their training, experience, education and judgment,” he said. “Instead, they must go against their better judgment to follow the law,” Shea said, noting that it interferes with the clinical judgment of these professionals, who are bound to assess inmates based on current health needs and correctional standards. 

He said the medical professionals already routinely review medications prescribed in the community at intake to determine the best options within the correctional environment. If the individual requires continued use of the medication and it is clinically appropriate, the medication will continue. 

He said the new law removes this step and instead imposes the continuation, regardless if it is clinically appropriate. 

“Health care in a jail must balance clinical best practices with operational security and safety,” he said. “This is something the impending law fails to consider.” 

If the injunction is not approved, he said a jail health care professional must consult with the licensed health care professional who prescribed the medication and get permission to change or discontinue a medication, or the inmate can provide written permission to discontinue a current prescription. 

“This may seem like a small step, however, people come into our facility at all hours of the day, every day of the week, including weekends and holidays,” Shea said. “Community health care providers are not available for consultation anytime we call them. Even if it is during business hours, those community health care providers are seeing other patients and are not required to answer or return phone calls to our jail facility when we reach out to them. Even still, not all inmates are citizens of Freeborn County or even Minnesota, requiring us to reach out to health care providers in other states to get permission to treat our inmates in our facility the best way we know how.” 

He said without an injunction, there is also concern that the providers who serve in the jail could leave the state, leaving the county with no one to provide the mandated medical care. 

He noted there are also many times when people come to jail with prescriptions they have not taken for weeks — some of which would counteract with the street drugs they have used or that are no longer appropriate for their mental health state. Some prescriptions are even improperly obtained. 

Restarting them, or continuing them, at the beginning of their confinement could cause potential adverse side effects, opening up the medical providers, the county and the Sheriff’s Office up to lawsuits. 

He said the law also creates an unfunded mandate, requiring county jails to administer and procure specialty medications at the cost of taxpayer dollars when other alternative medication is available.

“I stand opposed to the new law because I genuinely care about the people we serve,” he said. “I do not want to see people injured, especially when we can see the adverse effects of this law ahead of time.”