In The Politics of Autism, I discuss court cases involving the civil rights of people with autism and other disabilities.
Trump does not care. He despises people with disabilities. His head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division is a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.
In June, the Department of Justice quietly released a memo pertaining to the landmark 1999 disability civil rights case Olmstead v. L.C. DOJ stated it “will not rely upon the Olmstead Guidance in its enforcement” of the ADA, and that Olmstead is “not enforceable.”That precedent, the memo claimed without evidence, increases homelessness.
In a memo in June, the Justice Department asserted a new interpretation of a decades-old Supreme Court decision that has required the government to provide care to people with significant disabilities in their own communities whenever possible, rather than segregating them in institutions.
That Supreme Court decision put in place new limits and obligations and changed what it means to live with a disability in America — whether you’re a homeless person with mental illness, a preschooler with cerebral palsy or a nursing home resident with Alzheimer’s.
Now, many families caring for someone with a significant disability see an emerging threat to government obligations they have long relied on.
Those obligations include public benefits that the administration has sought to limit in other ways, like Medicaid. In one case in Florida, the Justice Department already appears to be using its reinterpretation of the law to argue that the government is not required to provide at-home care for children with complex medical conditions.
More such cases could follow, potentially upending the way people with disabilities receive care in any number of states. Among the many people who could be affected by the Florida case is a 13-year-old boy named Dylan Webb who has A.D.H.D. and autism, as well as a blood-clotting disorder and a heart condition that requires constant access to a defibrillator.
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The staffing of Dylan’s nurses is governed by a court order that covers thousands of children in Florida with complex medical needs. It emerged from an anti-discrimination lawsuit, one of many where the federal government pressed states to do more to prevent disabled people from being put in institutions.
At a trial in 2023, the federal judge in Florida, Donald Middlebrooks, heard stories of enormous hardship. One grandmother testified she had lost her home because, with patchy nursing care for the grandson who lived with her, she couldn’t work consistently. In a decision ordering more in-home nursing, the judge wrote that when nursing shifts went unfilled, families endured harrowing conditions trying to keep their children from growing up in pediatric nursing homes.
But the Justice Department is seeking to undo the judge’s order in Florida, citing the legal position on disability rights that the office took in the June memo, when it said states were not required to provide care for disabled people at home and in their communities whenever possible.
