Trump Actions Eye Disabled People      07/01 06:15

   

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- For decades, disabled people have fought for their rights 
to go to school and live alongside peers without disabilities -- rights that 
some fear could be losing ground under the Trump administration.

   Last month, the Education Department announced it would offload oversight of 
special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert 
F. Kennedy Jr., whose comments on the limits of disabilities such as autism 
have drawn sharp rebukes from advocates and lawmakers.

   Meanwhile, following a White House push to police homelessness, the 
Department of Justice released guidance that lowered the barrier to 
institutionalizing any person with a disability.

   Taken together, the actions signal a worrying return to a reality where 
people with disabilities are pushed to the margins of society, advocates said.

   "It's a direct, frontal assault on the rights of people with disabilities to 
live their lives the way that people who are nondisabled live their lives," 
said Selene Almazan, legal director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and 
Advocates. "I can't imagine that as a country, that would be something that we 
would agree we should go back to."

   The move away from confining people with disabilities

   Since the 1960s, legislation and court decisions have progressively expanded 
supports and protections for people with disabilities to go to school with 
nondisabled peers and to live and work in their communities. Before that, 
people with mental illnesses or developmental and intellectual disabilities 
were largely confined to institutions.

   Advocates have pushed back on what's known as the "medical model," where an 
individual's disability is viewed as a defect to be cured. Instead, under a 
"social model" of disability, differences can be accommodated and supported, as 
people with and without disabilities learn and work alongside each other.

   Families and advocates have warned that moving special education to a health 
department marks a return to the medical model. They've also been angered by 
Kennedy's attempts to link vaccines to autism, going against decades of 
research that show no such link, and his framing of autism as a debilitating 
disease.

   Kennedy's comments last year, where he said children with autism would never 
write a poem, pay taxes or hold a job, raised questions about how he would 
oversee an agency meant to help students develop those skills. Kennedy later 
said he was referring to people with " severe autism " or those who are 
nonverbal.

   "Many of the things he said autistic people will never do, (special 
education) is in charge of making sure students with disabilities have the 
opportunity to do," said Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self 
Advocacy Network. "Will he execute that faithfully, or does he consider 
disabled students a lost cause until we find some medical cure?"

   The Supreme Court weighs in

   In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that segregating disabled people who are 
otherwise able to live in their community with proper supports was a form of 
discrimination. The Olmstead v. L.C. decision led to requirements that 
government agencies provide disability services in the most integrated setting 
possible -- in mainstream schools, homes and workplaces.

   But in a memo issued in June, the Department of Justice's Office of Legal 
Counsel upended that guidance. It argued that neither the Americans with 
Disabilities Act nor Section 504, two major disability rights laws, requires 
states to provide services in the most mainstream setting. While the memo does 
not change the law, it signals how federal agencies may interpret and enforce 
civil rights issues related to the topic -- and it could embolden states or 
school districts to decline to support people with disabilities in mainstream 
environments.

   The White House has already acted on a similar philosophy. Last year, 
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on homelessness that endorsed 
civil commitment, where a court orders individuals into involuntary 
hospitalization or treatment programs. Trump directed HHS to reduce barriers to 
institutionalizing people with mental illnesses.

   In its memo, the Justice Department acknowledged its interpretation of the 
Supreme Court's Olmstead decision is "out of step" with the common 
understanding. If a state starts to provide services in institutional settings, 
legal challenges likely would follow, the DOJ said.

   The Trump administration's steps fit a worldview in which the government has 
no obligation to support people with disabilities, said Claudia Center, legal 
director at Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.

   "It's dark, and it's awful," Center said. "And I think it's contrary to the 
majority view in our country. ... It's out of touch with where our society is."

   Families say their kids thrive in mainstream classes

   The moves have created a deep sense of uncertainty for students with 
disabilities.

   Lindsey Althaus says home and community-based services in northwest Ohio 
have been instrumental to her family. Her 12-year-old son, Whitman, has autism 
and a neurological disorder called apraxia, in which the brain struggles to 
tell muscles how to move to form words or perform other motor skills. For some 
of his school career, with proper support services, Whitman was able to spend 
much of his school day in a classroom that included kids without disabilities.

   Through a Medicaid waiver program, Althaus pays her mother to care for 
Whitman in her absence. That allows him to spend time out in the community with 
his grandmother while Althaus and her husband are working or away with their 
daughter.

   Under the Justice Department's new interpretation of Olmsted, states would 
have fewer obligations to fund and support those programs. And Kennedy, in 
testimony to lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year, criticized similar 
programs as subject to fraud.

   "We want to be able to have him in the community," said Althaus, who works 
as a disability rights advocate. "It's just starting to feel like Whitman's not 
going to be welcome anymore. We're going back to this: You're either perfect, 
or you're not in the light."

   For many students with disabilities, schools are where they receive the 
majority of support services and where they are integrated among their peers. 
Before Magda Nakassis's 8-year-old son, who is autistic and nonverbal, started 
public school in Maryland, his preschool experience had largely been defined by 
being kicked out of things, she said.

   In school, Nakassis said, she found teachers and staff members who 
understood her son's needs and told her to stop apologizing for them. A program 
at his school called Fantastic Friends teaches mainstream fifth graders about 
autism, and they spend recesses with children in the autism program. Every 
year, Nakassis said, there is a waitlist to be a Fantastic Friend.

   Nakassis said that it has been difficult to see the ways autism in 
particular has become politicized. Every child is entitled to a public 
education in this country, Nakassis said, and special education is a response 
to the fact that some children have differences that require additional support.

   Regardless of his diagnosis, his right to an education is not a medical 
issue, she said, but rather a question of equity and access in a society that 
often pushes disabled people to the margins.

   "There are lots of kids like him out there, and I sometimes wonder, 'what 
did we use to do?'" Nakassis said. "I can't believe it was better."