The Trump administration released a memo last week that seeks to upend landmark disability laws and court rulings that prioritize people with disabilities receiving care while living in their community instead of at institutions like nursing homes.
The memo — written by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel in response to an inquiry from White House officials — breaks with decades of disability law and practice and argues that the “integration mandate” is not actually a mandate, especially for people with “severe mental illness or disabilities.”
“This is potentially devastating for the rights of people with disabilities,” said Jennifer Mathis, deputy director for the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s civil rights division.
The memo does not change existing laws or decisions that have laid the groundwork for the integration mandate, including Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead v. L.C. decision. Courts still must abide by their precedents and these three legal pillars if a lawsuit hits their dockets.
However, the memo publicly signals the Trump administration’s stance on the rights of people with disabilities, especially their right to be not segregated in institutions to receive necessary care, several legal experts say. They expect the Justice Department to pull back from its longstanding role as the federal enforcer of the so-called Olmstead claims that place institutionalized people with disabilities back into their communities, and they also worry that the memo tees up an attempt to dismantle the Olmstead decision.
