Catch up on what you missed with our Education newsletter, sent weekly. For nearly 50 years, the federal government has said people with disabilities should live, work and learn in the most integrated setting possible rather than be segregated in institutions like nursing homes. The Trump administration just took its most concrete step yet to reverse that position.
Last week, a federal judge agreed to strip out mentions of "integration" from federal regulations tied to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, a landmark civil rights law that prohibits disability discrimination. The judge did so after the Justice Department declined to defend its own rules in a lawsuit brought by several states challenging the legality of those rules. Part of what is so striking about Texas v.
Kennedy is that the federal government was originally the defendant in that lawsuit, brought by states fighting what's known as the integration mandate. Then, it switched sides and agreed with the states that the requirement should be undone. Bruce Darling, president and CEO of the Center for Disability Rights, says when he heard about the ruling, it felt "like a knife in your chest.
Because what we're hearing, what people are hearing, is that the federal government has made a determination that [disabled people] don't have a right to live in freedom, that they can be locked up against their will." The court's decision removes regulations from Section 504 that explicitly required federally funded programs to provide services in the "most integrated setting." "That lack of clarity will impact people's rights. It will likely impact what states do and how they behave," says Jennifer Mathis, a disability rights lawyer who helps lead the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. Mathis says it's important to note that the court's decision did not undo integration protections tied to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or those established by decades of case law, including the landmark Supreme Court decision known as Olmstead.
"My concern is that right now, where we're at is disabled people have a right to integration on paper. It is in the law, but whether it gets practically enforced is a serious question," Darling says. His organization is putting its energy behind a proposed law that would cement protections around integration, while others are working with states to strengthen their disability laws.
The Justice Department did not respond to multiple requests from NPR asking why it is changing course after decades of legal and bipartisan support for community-based services. In 1973, Congress passed the first civil rights law for people with disabilities: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. But it took advocates years of fighting — until 1977 — to get actual regulations that would make that law enforceable.
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