Federal Judge Henry Wingate has ruled that the lone minor in the 7-year-old federal lawsuit against the state over children’s mental health services can file an amended lawsuit and continue with the case.

Attorneys for the state argued against allowing an amended complaint and wanted the case dismissed.

Wingate said in his ruling that over the course of the litigation, several plaintiffs had reached adulthood and therefore were no longer proper plaintiffs.

“Here, given the changed circumstances of the case, the plaintiff should be allowed to amend the complaint to confirm to the claims made on behalf of the individual plaintiff,” Wingate ruled.

However, Wingate said the lone plaintiff won’t be able to reassert a claim previously dismissed in the case involving the Early and Periodic, Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment provision of the Medicaid Act.

Wingate said the amended complaint should be filed within 10 days of the April 14 order.

L.S., who is still a minor, is the remaining plaintiff in the case referred to as the Troupe litigation, and he is no longer seeking a class-action case. His case is about individually seeking to receive mental health services in the most integrated setting. Originally, there were four minor plaintiffs.

Last month, Wingate ruled a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against the state mental health system should remain separate from the lawsuit over children’s mental health services. Wingate’s decision came after U.S. Magistrate Judge Mike Parker in December agreed to a request by the state to merge the cases.

The defendants in both cases filed a motion to consolidate, claiming the two lawsuits involved common issues of fact and law and should be consolidated.

The Justice Department, which filed a lawsuit last year after breaking off negotiations with the state, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which had filed the 2010 lawsuit against the state on behalf of the four minors, were opposed to merging the lawsuits.

Wingate has not ruled on a request by the state asking him to deny a motion for him to privately review a March 2015 Mississippi Children’s Behavioral Health Assessment report by the Boston-based nonprofit Technical Assistance Collaborative to determine if it should be classified as a public document. The $300,000 taxpayer-funded report commissioned by the Mississippi Department of Mental Health evaluated mental health services for children and housing for the mentally handicapped.

In 2015, the Department of Mental Health refused a Clarion-Ledger request to release the results of the evaluation of its child services, which have been under scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice for alleged numerous violations since at least 2010.

Contact Jimmie E. Gates at 601-961-7212 or [email protected]. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.