- City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center (1985)
DREDF filed an amicus brief on its own behalf in the Cleburne case, which challenged a zoning ordinance that prohibited group homes for persons with mental retardation from being placed in specific areas of the community. This was the first high court case to consider the question of whether disability constitutes a “suspect class” for purposes of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. While the Court did not give disability “suspect class” status, Cleburne did hold that there was no rational basis to exclude such a group home from a family neighborhood.Read the brief (PDF)
