WASHINGTON (AP) — For decades, disabled people have fought for their rights to go to school and live alongside peers without disabilities — rights that some fear could be losing ground under the Trump administration.
Last month, the Education Department announced it would offload oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose comments on the limits of disabilities such as autism have drawn sharp rebukes from advocates and lawmakers.
Meanwhile, following a White House push to police homelessness, the Department of Justice released guidance that lowered the barrier to institutionalizing any person with a disability.
Taken together, the actions signal a worrying return to a reality where people with disabilities are pushed to the margins of society, advocates said.
“It’s a direct, frontal assault on the rights of people with disabilities to live their lives the way that people who are nondisabled live their lives,” said Selene Almazan, legal director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. “I can’t imagine that as a country, that would be something that we would agree we should go back to.”
The move away from confining people with disabilities
Since the 1960s, legislation and court decisions have progressively expanded supports and protections for people with disabilities to go to school with nondisabled peers and to live and work in their communities. Before that, people with mental illnesses or developmental and intellectual disabilities were largely confined to institutions.
Advocates have pushed back on what’s known as the “medical model,” where an individual’s disability is viewed as a defect to be cured. Instead, under a “social model” of disability, differences can be accommodated and supported, as people with and without disabilities learn and work alongside each other.
Families and advocates have warned that moving special education to a health department marks a return to the medical model. They’ve also been angered by Kennedy’s attempts to link vaccines to autism, going against decades of research that show no such link, and his framing of autism as a debilitating disease.
Kennedy’s comments last year, where he said children with autism would never write a poem, pay taxes or hold a job, raised questions about how he would oversee an agency meant to help students develop those skills. Kennedy later said he was referring to people with ” severe autism ″ or those who are nonverbal.
“Many of the things he said autistic people will never do, (special education) is in charge of making sure students with disabilities have the opportunity to do,” said Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “Will he execute that faithfully, or does he consider disabled students a lost cause until we find some medical cure?”
The Supreme Court weighs in
In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that segregating disabled people who are otherwise able to live in their community with proper supports was a form of discrimination. The Olmstead v. L.C. decision led to requirements that government agencies provide disability services in the most integrated setting possible — in mainstream schools, homes and workplaces.
But in a memo issued in June, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel upended that guidance. It argued that neither the Americans with Disabilities Act nor Section 504, two major disability rights laws, requires states to provide services in the most mainstream setting. While the memo does not change the law, it signals how federal agencies may interpret and enforce civil rights issues related to the topic — and it could embolden states or school districts to decline to support people with disabilities in mainstream environments.
The White House has already acted on a similar philosophy. Last year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on homelessness that endorsed civil commitment, where a court orders individuals into involuntary hospitalization or treatment programs. Trump directed HHS to reduce barriers to institutionalizing people with mental illnesses.
In its memo, the Justice Department acknowledged its interpretation of the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision is “out of step” with the common understanding. If a state starts to provide services in institutional settings, legal challenges likely would follow, the DOJ said.
The Trump administration’s steps fit a worldview in which the government has no obligation to support people with disabilities, said Claudia Center, legal director at Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.
“It’s dark, and it’s awful,” Center said. “And I think it’s contrary to the majority view in our country. … It’s out of touch with where our society is.”