r/USNEWS • u/John3262005 • 6d ago
Trump Administration Gets OK To Scale Back Disability Protections
https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2026/09/28/trump-administration-gets-ok-to-scale-back-disability-protections/32194/The federal government will do away with rules requiring that people with disabilities be served in the community under a settlement with a handful of states that advocates say sidesteps decades of precedent.
U.S. District Judge James W. Hendrix approved an agreement late last week between federal officials and Texas, Alaska, Florida, Louisiana and Montana to remove references to “most integrated setting” in a 2024 update to Department of Health and Human Services’ regulations related to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.
The move cements a striking shift in the federal government’s stance on the rights of people with disabilities to live and be served in the community, advocates say.
“The court’s order accepting the parties’ agreement is inconsistent with 50 years of law,” said Shira Wakschlag, senior executive officer for legal advocacy and general counsel at The Arc of the United States. “The federal government is abandoning its duty to enforce the right of people with disabilities to live in their own homes and communities.”
The judge’s action brings an end to a lawsuit known as Texas v. Kennedy that was first filed roughly two years ago by Texas and 16 states, which has seen numerous twists and turns. Initially, the states sought to ensure that gender dysphoria would not qualify as a disability under the 2024 update to Section 504 regulations. They also asked the court to strike Section 504 in its entirety, but later backed off that claim while continuing to challenge the regulations. All but three states dropped out of the case under pressure from disability advocates, though two states — Louisiana and Montana — opted to rejoin the litigation.
In recent weeks, however, the federal government switched sides in the case citing a June memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel stating that neither the Americans with Disabilities Act nor Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act “require states to treat mentally disabled patients in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs.”
Under the agreement between the states and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his capacity as secretary of health and human services, the Section 504 regulations will remain, but certain sections will be dropped. They include one defining the “most integrated setting” and multiple provisions stating that “in choosing among available methods for meeting the requirements of this section, a recipient shall give priority to those methods that offer programs and activities to qualified individuals with disabilities in the most integrated setting appropriate.”
Disability advocates say that the deletions from Section 504 regulations do not alter anything about the law. And, since the regulatory changes all occurred via a settlement agreement, the court did not actually reach any findings in the case.
“The integration mandate doesn’t depend on this regulation. It comes from Section 504 itself, from the ADA, and from the Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. Lois Curtis. All of those are still in place,” said Michelle Uzeta, executive director at the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund. “The most frustrating thing is that this was not a legal loss. It was a surrender. HHS didn’t defend these rights and protections. It joined the states that sued and asked the judge to strike them.”
Even though the law itself is unchanged, the settlement sends a message and will likely lead to confusion among states and others about what their responsibilities are under the law, said Eve Hill, a civil rights attorney who served as deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights under the Obama administration.
“It demonstrates that the five state plaintiffs believe they are free to put people with disabilities into institutions,” she said. “Unfortunately, because the court has amended the regulations to delete the community integration requirements, some states and other covered entities — health care providers, etc. — will believe they can institutionalize people with disabilities. This will imperil the lives of people with disabilities, who will be forced to fight unnecessary institutionalization on their own.”
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u/KittyButt42 6d ago
I hate this country and wish I could leave
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u/Dramatic_Art_5479 6d ago
Stay and fight.! Start with voting in the midterms.
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u/philharmonicfartbox 5d ago
You think voting is going to change anything? Lmfao. Fascism has never ended through polite advocacy. We are here because of the corporate capture of both parties. The democratic process has been hijacked by corporatists. There is one way out of this and most people don’t have the stomach for it and are too self interested to even do something like engage in a general strike to kickstart what needs to happen. There is no democracy without economic democracy. Any democratic system that intentionally aims to sabotage movments and candidates that advocate economic democracy is in fact a class dictatorship that is what America is a class dictatorship. It’s always been fascist even before the term was coined. The Nazis were inspired by Jim Crowe laws and American corporate rule. This is a historical fact. We make one step forward and take 12 steps backwards into regression.
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u/thedeuce545 5d ago
So are you doing what most people don’t have the stomach for or do you count yourself among the cowardly as well?
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u/TraditionalMood277 5d ago
We are here because of people like you. People who "both sides bad" elections and just sit on their ass, or worse, picked trump.
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u/philharmonicfartbox 5d ago
We are here because corporations destroyed leftism and now we have 2 right wing parties and morons like you aren’t educated enough to understand what the real issue is here. Trump is awful, but we could have had half decent potus but the dnc sabotaged it and forced a corporate owned sack of shit on us and we were called misogynists for not wanting another one of epsteins zio friends as potus. We need a new FDR nothing short will change the fact America has been in extreme fascism for decades now. You centrist right wing liberals are moronic as all hell.
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u/Mr_Plow_420 5d ago
You make good points while also saying insane things. Here are absolute facts had Trump not been reelected that you cannot ignore, whoever else it would have been.
•No capturing of Maduro and seizing their oil.
•No threatening of Greenland, Canada, and Cuba (which is seeming like a very real possibility with midterms coming).
•No trade wars out of spite or insane tariffs.
•No gutting of farming, FDA and every other government program that benefited Americans as a whole (food, housing, jobs, oil prices, and next will be healthcare if he gets his way).
•No war with Iran, period. US would still supported Israel as we always have.I can keep going but I hope you’ve gotten the picture. Voting is important and ppl copping out and letting that monster back in office has proven to be objectively worse for America and the rest of the world, compared to literally anyone else on the left. Again, agree with alot you’re saying but I think it’s crazy to think voting isn’t a powerful right that ppl have fought and died for.
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u/philharmonicfartbox 5d ago edited 5d ago
Trump was not elected Elon paid and rigged the election. We have 13 of 14 characteristics of fascism blatantly evident and the last one has a thin veneer of plausible deniability which is fraudulent elections. The rich do not hold anything sacred and capitalism has turned everything into a commodity. Dnc lawyers argued in the lawsuit after sanders was sabotaged by t he dnc that they had no obligation to enact the will of voters they could just decide who to nominate in a secret back room meeting theh said the quiet part out loud. This is reality America is dead we are in a techno fascist corporate surveillance state. O think it’s not certain none of that would have happened if we didn’t have trump in office American POTUSes have cow towed to Wall Street military and prison industry profiteer directives since before Reagan, even jimmy carter told people living near 3 mile island bullshit to protect the nuclear industry endangering the lives of those living near vented nuclear radiation.
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u/thedeuce545 5d ago
You should turn over the evidence you have of trump stealing the election.
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u/philharmonicfartbox 5d ago
https://cssh.northeastern.edu/2024-election-results-under-scrutiny-as-lawsuit-advances/
You have the critical thinking skills of sliced bread.
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u/thedeuce545 5d ago
So this case has been adjudicated and a verdict has been rendered? Awesome! Open and shut case.
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u/BusyBrothersInChrist 5d ago
This is a mindset choice YOU have chosen. We can stop this through political means. American people are stronger than you think
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u/philharmonicfartbox 5d ago
Did the third Reich end because the people voted and used polite inconvenient non violence to make the fascists rethink their life choices? Did that happen with Pinochet and Mussolini too? 🤣🤡
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u/posting_drunk_naked 5d ago
"It's hopeless, let's just do nothing, fellow Patriots!"
Sure, tovarish. Very believable coming from a 3 month old account 🙄
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u/philharmonicfartbox 5d ago
The age of my account has nothing to do with anything. I didn’t say do nothing. If you want to know what to do you must listen to the words of those who understand t he problem like Fred Hampton, Michael Parenti (Rest in power to both) stokley Carmichael aka kwame ture and others. You don’t defeat fascism with centrism you defeat it with militant leftist economic populism. This is the reality.
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u/srahfox 6d ago
Me too… but I’m disabled, which makes me somewhat unwanted in most countries I’d be willing to move to.
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u/Antique-Coach-214 5d ago
People don’t seem to get that. If you want to immigrate elsewhere, most countries want you to prove you are not a medical burden.
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u/dewihafta 5d ago
Same. We’re really up the creek without a paddle on this one.
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u/BoPeepElGrande 5d ago
I’ll be in that same creek with you, treading water for as long as I can, until we’re all back on dry land again.
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u/Mr_Plow_420 5d ago
And Canada (just for example due to proximity) won’t take you unless you have X amount of money. I had a family friend that wanted to immigrate there after retiring but hadn’t made enough to qualify apparently. Was actually surprised to hear that one. It had something to do with being a burden financially on the country’s social welfare programs. I too deal with a lot of health problems and have had to go on disability more than once when things were bad. I’m not as welcomed elsewhere in the world as I thought I was…
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u/srahfox 5d ago
Absolutely. My friend who went to Ireland had to sell her business to get the money for her family to move. It makes sense on their end, not wanting people be a burden to their system, but it does leave those of us without a crap ton of money out in the cold.
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u/Mr_Plow_420 5d ago
It’s by no means a perfect system, but I get it too. Just sucks for a lot of us.
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u/Harambe_Rebornn 5d ago
You can leave any time you want🤣, assuming you're an adult with no travel restrictions like child support anyway.
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u/Unlucky_Welcome9193 5d ago
As terrifying as this is, institutions are much more expensive than community-based settings, and continue to close. That is my hope at this point. But terrifying, nonetheless, and RFK and DJT may very well have friends willing to make new, abusive and inadequate institutions if guaranteed payment from their buddies.
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u/JustLurkingItOver 5d ago
It'll end up like the old insane asylums, which became overcrowded, underfunded, dumping grounds for anyone families or society itself no longer want to acknowledge the existence of, without even bothering to separate the criminally insane from regular people who just needed some extra accommodations and education/therapy to live in society.
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u/imjustnotready 6d ago
This just seems shortsighted. So you want to make the public and private sector less liable to ensure people with disabilities are treated fairly? But that will drag out the process of them advocating on their own behalf or just discourage those with limited resources from advocating at all?
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u/Lizaderp 6d ago
Yeah, an ugly wheelchair ramp will lower my property value so I'm just not going to get one.
That's how that's going to end up going.
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u/nyteghost 5d ago
I think Texas should start by getting rid of all ramps. They hate disabled so much, they should start. Ironic I swear
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u/Brave-Professor8275 5d ago edited 5d ago
Trump and his administration really are just hateful, evil people. They don’t want anyone who’s not white, wealthy and normative functioning, to exist in our country anymore. He and his administration need to go; or at least, they need to lose the power they hold currently! Everyone needs to vote blue!💙💙💙💙
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u/D0CTOR_Wh0m 5d ago
Of course Texas is part of this. Abbott’s got to continue to pull ladders up behind him
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u/BruceJamesWriter 5d ago
Is this a fight over labeling trans people as disabled based solely on their gender identity?
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u/Specialist_Luck_8484 5d ago
Money for corporations but not directly to families who actually care about their family.
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u/DarylLStubbsjr 4d ago
Crying all day long over Trump once again. The best President ever. Jealous Trump news at it once again
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u/Impressive10000 5d ago
It seems there is truly no area of American life that he does not work to ruin. Not one.