DOJ memo stokes fear among disability advocates of a return to institutionalization

[Wiz Imp]

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/20/nx-s1-5865100/doj-memo-trump-disability-civil-rights-institutionalization

The Justice Department released a memo this week that quietly calls into question decades of civil rights protections for Americans with disabilities and stirred fear and anger among advocates and families.

The memo, an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel, argues that states do not have to provide in-home or community-based care to people with disabilities who need support. These services allow many disabled Americans to continue to live, learn and work at home or in their own communities, among family and friends.

"It is now the position of the United States government that people with disabilities don't have a right to be part of their communities," says Alison Barkoff, a health law and policy professor at George Washington University who led disability law and policy efforts during both the Obama and Biden administrations. "I can't overstate how significant this change in position is."

The most outrageous part of this is :

The new memo, written by Lanora Pettit, principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, argues that, while federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability, it does not impose an "integration mandate" on states to provide these community services. At one point, Pettit acknowledges the novelty of this reading: "We recognize that this view of Olmstead's import is out of step with the common understanding of that decision within the federal courts."

In other words, a government official wrote down, in black and white, admitting that no court in the country agrees with her, yet she made that argument the "official" Federal Goverment position anyway.