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A judge has signed an order and final judgment in a high-profile disability rights case, striking down protections that allow disabled people to live in community. The judgment changes federal regulations but does not change disability rights law. Experts warn it is likely to lead to litigation and confusion in the courts.
The final judgment came on September 23, a few weeks after the Trump administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) asked a federal court to remove the protections from the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) 2024 Section 504 regulations. It follows months of litigation in Texas v. Kennedy, a lawsuit against HHS and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. targeting civil rights protections for disabled people.
“It sends a message to the world that the federal government doesn’t care about this anymore and, in fact, is hostile to the rights of people with disabilities,” said Jennifer Mathis, deputy director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, after the proposal was announced on September 1. “It’s a complete abdication of the federal government’s responsibility to enforce civil rights laws and disability rights laws.”
Texas v. Kennedy targeted Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, and a body of regulations and court decisions that have followed that legislation, including the 1999 Supreme Court case Olmstead v. Lois Curtis. The court held in that case that segregating disabled people when needed support could be provided in the community is a form of discrimination prohibited under the ADA.
Seventeen state plaintiffs first filed the case during the Biden administration after HHS released a long-awaited rule updating Section 504. The updated rule clarified that the so-called integration mandate requires entities receiving federal dollars to serve disabled people in the most integrated setting appropriate. That mandate was first outlined in the ADA. The new rule also clarified that disabled people can bring a nondiscrimination suit if they are at serious risk of institutionalization due to a lack of community-based services, even if they have not yet been institutionalized.
Eight states withdrew from the case before an amended complaint was filed as Texas v. Kennedy in January 2026. Those states dropped because Kennedy’s HHS announced a trio of anti-trans rules the previous month. One of the rules addressed part of the original complaint, which argued that the Biden-era rule was unlawful because it acknowledged that gender dysphoria may be a disability.
Though several states abandoned the case, Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, South Dakota and Texas continued with the amended complaint. This May, I reported for Truthout that an ambitious nationwide advocacy effort had succeeded in persuading Indiana and South Dakota to withdraw from the lawsuit. Later, Kansas and Missouri also dropped the case, leaving only five state plaintiffs.
Rather than continue to fight the case, on September 1, the DOJ, on behalf of HHS, joined the remaining states in asking a federal court to strip community integration protections from HHS’s 2024 Section 504 regulations. The proposal followed a memo the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel issued in June, claiming that federal law does not include an integration mandate for disabled people.
Bloomberg reported that White House adviser Stephen Miller was the driving force behind the June memo. Reportedly, Miller is concerned about a conflict between the integration mandate and Trump’s July executive order calling on cities and states to force unhoused people into what the order calls “treatment centers.” Trump has also advocated for “tent cities,” or government-run detention camps, for unhoused people.
Rights groups have pointed out that the June memo cannot supersede law. It “does not and cannot change the law,” Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund wrote in a published response. “The Olmstead case and the integration mandate are still the law of the land.”
The June memo was also condemned by one hundred members of Congress, who warned in a letter published the following month that the new interpretation “risks creating, supporting, and encouraging policies that steer individuals into segregated settings such as nursing homes, psychiatric facilities, and segregated classrooms.” The signatories joined rights groups in calling for the DOJ to rescind the memo, writing that “we cannot return to a time when people with disabilities were denied basic civil rights, ripped away from their families, and institutionalized against their will.”
Mathis said the resolution in Texas v. Kennedy represents not only a failure of the government’s responsibility to safeguard the civil rights of disabled Americans, but it is also likely to lead to litigation and confusion in the courts. “We still have rights, and we will fight for those rights,” she said. “The upshot here is that they may ask a court to take away the regulations, but we still have the law on our side.”
Rights groups urge advocates to continue contacting lawmakers in their states to ask them to push back against the federal government’s efforts to undermine the integration mandate and to commit to safeguarding the rights of disabled people.
Editor's Note: This article was updated extensively on September 24 to reflect the resolution in Texas v. Kennedy.
