Administrative Complaint Against the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) and the California Department of Health Care Services (CDHCS)
DREDF filed an administrative complaint with the US Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (HHS–OCR) charging the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) and the California Department of Health Care Services (CDHCS) with failure to adequately monitor disability discrimination in public benefits programs throughout California. People with disabilities and their families and children are among the poorest of the poor in California and are disproportionately burdened by homelessness, hunger, and illness. But state–administered programs — CalWORKs, IHSS, MediCal and others – are placing life–sustaining cash–aid assistance beyond their reach by failing to provide accessible services through ADA–mandated reasonable accommodations and the overseeing bodies—CDSS and CDHCS—are failing to enforce these laws despite being charged with this responsibility.
The Complaints ask HHS-OCR to promptly investigate and order the remedies requested in the Complaint bring to end California’s pervasive substandard disability civil rights enforcement system that has perpetrated countless discriminatory harms on the most needy.