The John Adams Courthouse, where the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court presides, stands in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., September 7, 2023. In a unanimous ruling Thursday, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a 2018 lower court ruling that the state acted in bad faith in regulating the Canton-based Judge Rotenberg Educational Center. The legal fight over the facility began in 1985, when the state sought to ban the shock treatment. In 2013, the state sought to terminate the consent order altogether, before Judge Field's ruling in 2018 that it was still necessary because of state regulators' bad faith conduct. A federal appeals court in 2021 ruled in a separate case that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could not ban the shock device.

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Persons: John Adams, Brian Snyder, Katherine Field, JRC, Michael Flammia, Scott Kafker, Judge Field's, Brendan Pierson, Alexia Garamfalvi, Deepa Babington Organizations: REUTERS, Massachusetts, Rotenberg Educational, Probate, state's Department of Developmental Services, U.S . Food, Drug Administration, Thomson Locations: Massachusetts, Boston , Massachusetts, U.S, Canton, Bristol, New York