We Belong in the Community, Not in Institutions

DREDF Statement on the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel’s Opinion

The right of people with disabilities to live in the community with supports is foundational. This right is found in the original 1977 Section 504 regulations portrayed in The Power of 504 and Crip Camp. It was incorporated into Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act by Congress. And it was upheld in 1999 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Olmstead v. Lois Curtis.

Disabled people, our families, our allies, and core stakeholders share a decades-long understanding that serving disabled people in the community is right, just, desired, feasible, necessary, and required by law.

Today’s “slip opinion” from this administration’s Office of Legal Counsel – stating, essentially, that there is no integration mandate for disabled people under federal law – does not and cannot change this understanding. The Olmstead case is still the law of the land.

This memo is not a first or isolated attack on people with disabilities. This administration has stripped disabled people of healthcare and civil rights, attacked our ability to vote, held us up as examples to frighten the public from using the vaccines that help us be part of our communities, and abandoned their legal obligation to enforce the rights of our children to go to school. Now, they are pushing to institutionalize us and deny us community supports. There is no such thing as a “good” institution for disabled people. There is only loss of freedom, choice, and community. Let us refuse this administration’s determination to stop our voices, and to put us away.

DREDF and the entire disability community will keep fighting for our rights today, on Juneteenth (our holiday to commemorate the end of slavery), on June 22nd (the anniversary of the Olmstead v. Lois Curtis ruling), on July 4th (Independence Day), and every single day.