ADA's 'integration mandate' at stake
The story from the March/April Ragged Edge magazine
Mayors sign brief opposing integration
The story from the March/April Ragged Edge magazine
Olmstead Supreme Court Case
to be heard April 21
On April 21, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Olmstead v. L.C. and E.W. Disability rights activists across the nation say this watershed case under the Americans with Disabilities Act may set the clock back for disabled people. The Court will decide whether the ADA requires states to allow disabled people to live in the community, rather than forciing them to receive services in nursing homes and state institutions. See stories below for details.
Olmstead activism from Mouth magazine
Activists continue to convince states to drop controversial Supreme Court Case
West Virginia said Jan. 24 it would withdraw from the amicus brief in the controversial Olmstead v. L.C. case now before the U.S. Supreme Court (see below). The brief written by Florida Attorney General Robert A Butterworth and signed by attorneys general of 21 other states
In recent weeks activists from American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today and other disability groups have gone into overdrive to get states to withdraw from the suit.
By mid-January, Maryland activists had gotten their attorney general to fax a letter to Florida bowing out of the case.
On Jan. 29, after statewide protests by ADAPT members, Pennsylvania Attorney General Michael Fisher also sent a letter to withdrawing from the case -- Delaware AG Jane Brady did the same after a band of 9 ADAPTers confronted her in her office (see story directly below).
Washington state has also withdrawn. ADAPT activists are working to get Hawaii, Texas, Colorado, Utah and Nebraska to withdraw in coming days.
Organizing from Mouth magazine
Georgia ADAPT website
2nd state pulls out of anti-rights Supreme Court Case
Jan. 20 -- After meeting with disability activists from ADAPT, Delaware Attorney General Jane Brady has agreed to withdraw Delaware support of the Supreme Court case opposing integration for people with disabilities.
This is the second state to withdraw from the controversial lawsuit after lobbying by activists. The lawsuit, Olmstead v. L.C., asks the Court to rule that putting disabled people in institutions is not discrimination. Disability activists say that forcing people into institutions, rather than making states use that same money to pay for help in their homes, violates the integration mandate of the ADA. (See next story, below.)
Maryland withdraws from anti-rights Supreme Court Case
Jan. 14. -- A push by disability advocates has gotten Maryland to decide that it will not file a supporting brief in a case currently before the Supreme Court, Olmstead v. L.C. and E.W (see story directly below). The case, brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act on behalf of two people with mental retardation, will determine whether states must let people in institutions use that state money to live in the community. "We are grateful that Attorney General Joseph Curran, with the strong support of Governor Parris Glendening, has taken this action that underlines the importance of our civil rights," says a spokesperson from TASH, an advocacy group for persons with severe disabilities.
Activists hope to have similar successes in the other states who have signed onto the amicus brief. See story below.
Supreme Court case worries disability activists
The Supreme Court agreed Dec. 14 to hear a case that disability activists say could seriously jeopardize the right of folks with disabilities to live in the community.
The case concerns two Georgia citizens -- identified in court records only as L.C. and E.W. -- who had been placed in a state psychiatric hospital. They sued to be allowed to live in the community, arguing that their placement in an institution was illegal based on the Americans with Disabilities Act. They won their lawsuit -- twice, but the state has appealed.
The reason the Supreme Court has taken up the case, says Mike Auberger of American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, is because the governors of 22 states signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Georgia, in effect putting pressure on the Court to hear the case. The brief filed by the governors asks the Court to decide "the fundamental issue of whether Congress intended for institutional care to constitute discrimination."
The ADA says that a "public entity" -- in this case the state of Georgia -- must administer services, programs, and activities in the "most integrated setting appropriate." Disability activists call this the ADA's "integration mandate."
Disability rights attorney Steve Gold says the case will be "a defining moment" for the ADA. "If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Georgia, allowing states to continue to keep people in institutions against their will, "the ADA will become a mere shell of what it is intended to be." Gold fears the Court might "strip away its major civil rights provision -- integration."
"Each and every governor who signed onto the brief ought to be ashamed," said Auberger. Besides Florida, which prepared the brief, governors of Alabama, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming signed it.
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