Three days ago, on June 1, 2026, the US Food and Drug Administration missed its latest deadline to publish a final rule banning the use of electric shock devices on disabled students at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts. It is the second time the FDA has proposed a ban. It is the second time it has failed to finalize one. The JRC continues to shock its students.
The UN has called it torture. The FDA banned it in 2020. A federal appeals court overturned the ban in 2021. The FDA proposed a new ban in March 2024. It missed its deadline in 2026. In the meantime, approximately 54 students at the JRC are currently receiving electric shocks through electrodes attached to their skin, delivered remotely by staff using a device called the Graduated Electronic Decelerator. The majority of them are autistic. The majority of them are people of color. All of them are disabled.
What the Judge Rotenberg Center is and what it does
The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center is a private residential and day school in Canton, Massachusetts, for children and adults with developmental and emotional disabilities. It is the only facility in the US that uses electric shock as a behavioral intervention. Staff attach electrodes to students’ skin and carry remote controls. When a student engages in what staff members determine is a prohibited behavior, a staff member presses a button and delivers a shock. Prohibited behaviors have included not putting on a coat, moving hands without permission, and tensing up during a shock. Andre McColllins, a former student, was restrained to a board and shocked 31 times over seven hours after refusing to take off his jacket. That video, released in a 2012 court case, sparked the current campaign to ban the devices.
Another former student, Jennifer Msumba, who had autism and lived at the center for seven year, wore a backpack containing a shock device that staff controlled remotely. She told the FDA, “”I felt like I was being punished for being born. Because I was disabled I was being punished.”
The JRC calls the device “a treatment of last resort” and says families come to them after being refused by every other facility. Some families support its use. The disability rights community, the autistic self-advocacy community, the United Nations, the FDA, the American Psychological Association, and a coalition of 34 disability rights organizations call it torture
The legal history of the ban
In March 2020, the FDA issued a rule banning the use of electric shock devices for self-injury or aggressive behavior, finding that the risks outweighed any benefits. The JRC challenged the ban in court. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned the FDA’s ban in a 2-1 decision, ruling that the agency had exceeded its authority by interfering with the prace of medicine. The shocks resumed.
In March 2024, the FDA published a new proposed rule banning the devices, reopening the process from the beginning. Public comments closed in May 2024. The FDA was expected to publish a final rule by June 1, 2026. It did not. No explanation has been provided. In October 2024, a coalition of 34 disability rights organizations held a protest outside the JRC, demanding that the Massachusetts state legislature pass a bill prohibiting the devices after the federal process stalled. That bill also failed to pass.
Credit: Massachusetts Stop the Shock Coalition
This is a medical incarceration story
CripJustice defines medical incarceration as involuntary or non-consensual detainment, including conditions in residential setting for justice-involved youth and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, especially those under conservatorship or guardianship.
The Judge Rotenberg Center is exactly that system. Most students arrive there after being placed by state agencies or courts. many are under guardianship, meaning they cannot legally consent to or refuse treatment for themselves. Their guardians, often parents exhausted by a system that has failed their children at every turn, consent on their behalf to a treatment that the UN has categorized as torture. The students themselves have no legal recourse.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has specifically called on the US to ban the use of the Graduated Electronic Decelerator, stating that it constitutes torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The US has not acted on that call.
The racial dimension is also documented and important. The majority of students at the JRC who receive shocks are Black and Brown disabled people. The Massachusetts Stop the Shock Coalition has repeatedly raised this as a racial justice issue: a facility that shocks primarily disabled people of color, operated by a predominantly white staff and administration, in a state that considers itself a leader in disability rights.
What the Stop the Shock movement is demanding
The demands are straightforward. The FDA must finalize its proposed rule banning electric shock devices. The Massachusetts state legislature must pass legislature prohibiting their use within the state. The students currently residing in the JRC must be transitioned to facilities that use evidence-based, non-aversive behavioral support. And the US must respond to the UN’s formal finding that the practice constituted torture
None of these thing have happened. The FDA missed its deadline three days ago. The Massacusetts bill failed. The shocks continue.
At CripJustice, we name residential facilities that confine and harm disabled people as carceral institutions regardless of what they call themselves. The Judge Rotenberg Center calls itself a school. The students inside it are shocked by tensing up. The UN describes it as torture. The FDA agreed and then failed to act. The Massachusetts legislature failed to act. The federal appeals court actively reversed the ban.
The students at the JRC have been waiting for someone to act for decades. They are still waiting
Sources
FDA misses latest final rule deadline to ban electric shock devices — Liam O’Dell, June 1, 2026
When a school turns to shock therapy — Center for Public Integrity, January 2022
Disability rights groups protest at School of Shock — Workers World, October 17, 2024
Canton school for the disabled can continue using shock devices — Patch, 2021
FDA considers ban on shock devices used at Judge Rotenberg Center — CBS Boston
FDA proposes new ban on shock devices used at Massachusetts school — Boston.com, March 2024
