In March 2025, half of the staff of the U.S. Department of Education were fired. Many of these staff had roles that helped students with disabilities. A coalition of educators, school districts, and unions has filed a lawsuit to stop the mass layoffs and dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education. The lawsuit argues that these actions violate the Constitution and federal law and must be stopped.
/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.png00Shira Wakschlag/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.pngShira Wakschlag2025-04-03 08:32:032025-04-03 15:11:49Somerville Public Schools et al v. Trump et al
Overview: Amicus brief explaining that Section 504 and ADA claims in the education context should not be held to a higher standard of proof, and that plaintiffs need not show that a school district acted in “bad faith” or with “gross misjudgment” to prevail on their disability discrimination claims.
Excerpt: “In this brief, amici review case examples in which, time and again, the bad-faith-or-gross-misjudgment standard is deployed to the detriment of children with disabilities in K-12 schools. As indicated, a defendant’s bad faith or gross misjudgment is exceedingly difficult to prove. So, even schoolchildren who experience severe discrimination based on their disabilities are frequently denied much-needed compensatory damages. Our case review shows that, on the other hand, under the appropriate standard-the standard applicable to everyone outside the K-12 school setting-these schoolchildren would have been compensated for the harms caused by the discrimination that Section 504 and the ADA seek to remedy.”
/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.png00Evan Monod/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.pngEvan Monod2025-03-05 17:15:302025-03-07 11:29:42A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools
Overview: Texas v. Kennedy is a court case in Texas. A group of 17 states has sued the United States government. The states are asking the court to get rid of Section 504 and its new rules that protect people with disabilities from discrimination in health care and human services.
Court: U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Overview: Amicus brief explaining that the availability of compensatory damages and broad injunctive relief is essential in safeguarding the rights of people with disabilities under the ADA, and in fulfilling Congress’s goal of promoting inclusion and ending discrimination.
Excerpt: “The availability of comprehensive remedies under Title II serves essential functions beyond merely compensating individuals who have been subjected to discrimination. These remedies play a crucial role in achieving Congress’s broader goals in enacting the ADA and ensuring the statute’s effectiveness as a tool for eliminating disability discrimination in American society. Discrimination can inflict a complex web of injuries on people with
disabilities, ranging from immediate economic losses to long-term limitations on educational and professional opportunities, as well as dignitary harms that affect one’s ability to participate fully in society. Comprehensive remedies acknowledge this reality and provide courts with the tools necessary to craft relief that truly makes injured individuals whole. Robust remedies also deter discrimination. When public entities face the prospect of significant liability for discrimination, they have stronger incentives to voluntarily comply with the ADA’s requirements.”
/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.png00Evan Monod/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.pngEvan Monod2024-11-11 12:55:332024-11-21 14:07:39Payan v. Los Angeles Community College District
Overview: Amicus brief urging the court to reject an arbitrary cutoff for IQ scores in making the intellectual disability determination and emphasizing the importance of courts consulting clinical standards in their analysis.
Excerpt: “After decades of intensive study, mental disability professionals have a substantial understanding of what an individual’s score on an IQ test can tell us and what it cannot. There is a strong consensus among psychologists, psychiatrists, and other clinicians, as well as their professional associations, that imposing an arbitrary IQ cutoff score of 70 is wholly inconsistent with our scientific understanding of these instruments. Florida courts responsible for adjudicating Atkins cases are precluded from fairly evaluating all of the essential evidence that has probative value in making that determination. Evidence about a defendant’s impaired adaptive functioning—in this case, clearly impaired starting in childhood—cannot be ignored merely because of a judicially-imposed rule which is neither clinically nor scientifically justified. In Atkins, this Court invited States to devise ‘appropriate procedures to enforce the constitutional restriction’ against executing individuals with [intellectual disability]. The Florida Supreme Court’s arbitrary rule prevents consideration of relevant evidence and excludes from the Constitution’s protection a considerable portion of those persons who have mental retardation. It therefore cannot be deemed “appropriate.” Effectively reducing the group of individuals entitled to that protection by means of an arbitrary rule can hardly be deemed to be “enforcement” of the right that this Court announced.”
Overview: Amicus brief alongside other disability rights organizations arguing that Supreme Court precedent requires courts to refer to clinical standards when determining intellectual disability in death penalty cases.
Excerpt: “In Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), the United States Supreme Court held that executing defendants with intellectual disability violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Subsequently, in Hall v. Florida, 134 S. Ct. 1986 (2014), in accord with the clinical consensus, the United States Supreme Court rejected an arbitrary cutoff for intelligence quotient (“IQ”) scores in making the intellectual disability determination and emphasized the importance of courts’ adherence to the appropriate clinical standards in their analysis. In Moore v. Texas, 137 S. Ct. 1039 (2017) (hereinafter “Moore I”), the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments requires that adjudications of intellectual disability in death penalty cases be “informed by the views of medical experts” and that the non-clinical factors adopted in Ex parte Briseño, 135 S.W.3d 1 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004) may no longer be used because they create an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed. Following the Supreme Court’s lead, this Court has held that Texas courts ‘must be informed by the current medical diagnostic framework for assessing intellectual disability’ when determining whether a person has intellectual disability. Petetan v. State, 622 S.W.3d 321, 357 (Tex. Crim. App. 2021); Moore I, 137 S. Ct. at 1044. Courts must insist on the use of the clinical framework in evaluating Atkins claims. Otherwise, they risk violating the Eighth Amendment and unconstitutionally sentencing individuals to death.”
Court: U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Overview: Amicus brief arguing that California regional centers and their vendors, which coordinate and deliver services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, are places of public accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Excerpt: “Because they have physical buildings at which and from which they provide services to the public, California Regional Centers and their vendors (including Defendants/Appellees) are all places of public accommodation under Title III of the ADA. . .and the services they provide individuals like Plaintiffs/Appellants are covered by that statute. . .This Circuit’s requirement that discrimination challenged under Title III have a ‘nexus’ to a physical building simply requires a connection to that building; it does not require that the discrimination have occurred on the physical premises. The district court’s opinion requiring a showing that the challenged services were provided at Defendants’ offices. . . improperly restricted the reach of Title III, contrary to the plain language of the statute, its legislative history, and this Circuit’s precedent. The district court also improperly required that plaintiffs establish a violation of the ADA as a prerequisite to a claim under either Section 504 or the Unruh Act. These holdings are completely unsupported, as the three statutes – while all addressing disability discrimination – do so in different contexts with, as a result, different required factual predicates. Ultimately, by eliminating all recourse for individuals with IDD to challenge discrimination by Regional Centers and their vendors, the district court’s decision threatens to undermine years of progress through both the ADA and California’s Lanterman Act.”
/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.png00Evan Monod/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.pngEvan Monod2024-07-15 17:25:542024-09-04 11:35:09Guthrey v. Alta California Regional Center
Overview: Amicus brief arguing that the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits cities from criminalizing conduct associated with being unhoused.
Excerpt: “People with disabilities face unique challenges and deep-rooted stigmas that increase their risk for homelessness. Less than 5% of housing in the United States is accessible for moderate mobility disabilities, and less than 1% is accessible for wheelchair use. Housing costs are prohibitive for many disabled people who rely on public assistance for basic costs of living—the average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in the United States exceeds the maximum monthly Supplemental Security Income a person can receive. Moreover, widespread housing discrimination on the basis of disability further compounds the risk of homelessness. The Ordinances’ impact on homeless people with disabilities highlights how grossly out of proportion the punishments they impose are to the severity of the offense. Simply put, criminalizing the involuntary conduct of being a homeless person without a place to sleep—in a city with no public shelters—is anathema to the decency standards of any civilized society.”
/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.png00The Arc/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.pngThe Arc2024-04-10 11:08:362024-08-20 16:17:26City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson
In 2009, the state of Minnesota’s legislature implemented a moratorium on increases in licensed group homes, as a cost-savings measure. To free up capacity for those with the most significant needs, and to demonstrate ways to bolster the state’s ability to support people with disabilities in their own homes, The Arc Minnesota has been providing housing navigation services since 2009 through a Housing Access Services contract with the Minnesota Department of Human Services. To date, Housing Access Services has assisted over 2700 adults who have disabilities, with moving – many out of group homes and family homes – into homes of their own.
The Arc Minnesota is also a provider of the new Housing Stabilization Services program which was approved by the Center for Medicaid Services (CMS), administered by the Minnesota Department of Human Services and funded by a participant’s Medicaid. This is a billable housing navigation and housing sustaining service. Minnesota was the first state in the nation to implement Housing Stabilization Services.
The Arc Minnesota presents a summary of these programs as well as information about the programs’ history and impact.
Presenters: Andrea Zuber, CEO; Ellen Baudler, Housing Services Director; Karli Harguth, Self-advocacy Associate
/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.png00Pam Katz/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.pngPam Katz2022-02-04 13:29:202022-02-04 13:33:35A Home of One’s Own
Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Overview: The Arc filed an amicus brief in support of Plaintiffs’ appeal of the district court’s dismissal on ripeness grounds. The case, filed in federal district court in the Northern District of Texas in 2018, challenges the Housing Authority of the City of Dallas’s (DHA) refusal to use the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Project-Based Voucher (PBV) rent subsidy program to provide otherwise scarce affordable, independent housing opportunities for people with I/DD in the community. DHA was poised to offer such PBVs—each of which would permit a single-family house to be rented at subsidized rates to several people with I/DD who can live independently with appropriate supports—but then canceled its offering and has refused to offer any substitute, without any good reason. The lawsuit alleges that DHA’s actions violate the ADA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Fair Housing Act, and state law. The district court dismissed the case in April 2019 and Plaintiffs appealed to the Fifth Circuit. The amicus brief supports Plaintiffs’ request to reverse the district court’s dismissal order and let the case move forward and explains that DHA’s ongoing failure to provide access to its program (including through reasonable accommodations where necessary) deprives adults with I/DD of a critical opportunity to live in the most integrated setting appropriate in the community and creates an acute risk of homelessness and institutionalization.
Excerpt: “Title II of the ADA requires public entities to administer programs in the ‘most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of qualified individuals with disabilities,’ and Olmstead is noteworthy for its broad recognition of the rights of people with disabilities to live and receive needed services and supports in the community—as opposed to institutional settings—which has become known as the ‘integration mandate’ of the ADA. But this mandate—which also protects those who are “at risk” of institutionalization—cannot be fully realized without affordable housing opportunities in the community that are accessible to people with I/DD and enable them to live outside their family homes. For many adults with I/DD currently living in their family homes, opportunities that allow them to live in the community separate from their families are often preferable because these opportunities provide greater independence and autonomy. Additionally, living in the community separate from their families can be critical for adults with I/DD to avoid homelessness or institutionalization when a supporting family member inevitably ages and reaches a point where she or he can no longer provide shelter or support.”
/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.png00Pam Katz/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ArcLogo_Color_Rev_PNG_WEB.pngPam Katz2019-10-10 13:44:492023-01-27 12:24:32Community for Permanent Supported Housing et al. v. Housing Authority of the City of Dallas
