DOJ reinterprets disability rights law, challenging community care requirements

People with mental, physical, and intellectual disabilities receiving state-funded services face potential loss of community living arrangements and increased risk of institutionalization.

For nearly three decades, a single Supreme Court ruling has stood between millions of Americans with disabilities and the threat of institutional confinement — a ruling many in the movement placed alongside Brown v. Board of Education in its moral weight. On Thursday, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion reinterpreting that 1999 Olmstead decision, arguing that states bear no obligation to fund community-based living as an alternative to institutionalization. The opinion does not rewrite the law, but it withdraws the federal will to enforce it — and in the lives of

DOJ reinterprets disability rights law, challenging community care requirements

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