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Voice of Experience

Voice of Experience: October 2024

The Elder and Disability Rights Section Council Marks the 25th Anniversary of the Olmstead

Megan Rusciano

Summary

  • Olmstead was foundational in its recognition that people with disabilities have the same right as others to be full and equal members of the community.
  • When people with disabilities are denied access to community life and segregated in institutions, communities suffer because they are deprived of valuable personal insights, contributions, and leadership.
  • Fulfilling the promise of Olmstead 25 years later requires our continued efforts to end the unjustified isolation of people with disabilities.
The Elder and Disability Rights Section Council Marks the 25th Anniversary of the Olmstead
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This year, June 22nd marked the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. L.C.—a landmark case that is often heralded as the Brown v. Board of Education of the disability rights movement. Olmstead was brought by two women, Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson, who had psychiatric and intellectual disabilities and had for years sought release from a psychiatric hospital in Georgia. Both women had advocated tirelessly for their release. Lois Curtis pleaded “on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis to be released” to the community. Both women’s treating physicians believed that they should be released and that community-based services would better address their needs. Yet still the two women remained institutionalized. Atlanta Legal Aid took their case, which eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held that, under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), people with disabilities have specific rights to supports and services in the community. Writing for the majority, Justice Ginsburg recognized that “unjustified institutional isolation” is a form of discrimination, because it “perpetrates unwarranted assumptions that persons so isolated are incapable or unworthy of participating in community life” and because “confinement in an institution severely diminishes the everyday life activities of individuals, including family relations, social contacts, work options, economic independence, educational advancement, and cultural enrichment.”

Olmstead was foundational in its recognition that people with disabilities have the same right as others to be full and equal members of the community. For decades, even centuries prior, people with disabilities had languished in institutions, segregated from society, stripped of the choice and self-determination to map the course of their own lives, and were often subjected to abuse, neglect, or worse. The Olmstead decision opened the door to people with disabilities being able to access critical services and supports – including in-home care, accessible and affordable housing, and individualized therapies -- that can help them live in the community. Yet today, many people with disabilities continue to face widespread institutionalization and segregation—in hospitals, institutions, sheltered workshops, day habilitation programs, and nursing facilities—across the country. Access to community services is thwarted by limited placements, inadequate services, and lack of funding from and prioritization by States. When people with disabilities are denied access to community life and segregated in institutions, communities suffer because they are deprived of valuable personal insights, contributions, and leadership.

The late Judy Heumann said, “Change never happens at the pace we think it should. It happens over years of people joining together, strategizing, sharing, and pulling all the levers they possibly can.” Indeed, fulfilling the promise of Olmstead 25 years later requires our continued efforts to end the unjustified isolation of people with disabilities and bolster access to home- and community-based services that support them to thrive and flourish.

This article was originally published in the Elder Law & Disability Rights Section’s April 2024 E-Blast.