Thirty-six years ago, the Americans with Disabilities Act became law because people with disabilities demanded equal rights. The ADA was not a gift from the government. It was won through decades of organizing, protest, civil disobedience, and advocacy by people with disabilities who refused to remain invisible, segregated, or silent.
People fought for the right to enter public buildings, attend school, get a job, use transportation, receive healthcare, communicate, and participate in community life. Most importantly, for the right to control their own lives.
That fight is not over.
The Independent Living Movement is grounded in a simple but powerful belief: people with disabilities have the right to make their own choices and direct their own lives. We have the right to decide where we live, who we live with, who supports us, what services we receive, and what our lives look like. We are not patients to be managed, problems to be solved, burdens to be carried, or people to be hidden away. We are the experts on our own needs. We are people and we belong in our communities.
The 1999 Supreme Court decision in Olmstead v. L.C. affirmed that the unnecessary institutionalization of people with disabilities is discrimination under the ADA. It put into law what disabled people had said for generations: segregation is not care. Confinement is not protection. And an institution is not a substitute for a home, a family, or a life.
Today, that freedom is under attack.
In June, the U.S. Department of Justice issued an opinion attempting to tear apart the legal foundation of the ADA’s integration mandate and erase decades of progress under Olmstead. In July, DOJ went even further, announcing that it would no longer rely on its longstanding Olmstead guidance in the enforcement of Title II of the ADA. This is not an abstract legal disagreement. It is a direct threat to the lives and freedom of people with disabilities.
When DOJ questions whether states must provide services in the most integrated setting, it sends a message that community living is optional. It gives policymakers cover to cut home- and community-based services, ignore waiting lists, deny personal assistance, and push people into institutions because confinement may be easier for a system to administer. It’s usually not cheaper.
We know where this road leads because disabled people have lived that history. It leads to people being taken from their homes and separated from their families. It leads to people losing control over when they wake up, what they eat, who enters their rooms, who touches their bodies, and whether they are allowed to leave a building. It leads to isolation, neglect, abuse, and lives controlled by institutions rather than by the people living them.
We will not allow this administration to drag us backward.
DOJ cannot erase the ADA or overturn a Supreme Court decision through a legal opinion or administrative notice. The ADA and Section 504 remain the law. Olmstead remains the law of the land. But we should not pretend these actions are harmless. When the federal agency charged with protecting civil rights instead works to undermine them, we should all be outraged.
Moreover, these actions are part of a deeply concerning pattern. People with disabilities or who are otherwise considered different are increasingly villainized and portrayed as undeserving of the rights, resources, and opportunities afforded to everyone else. Diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and civil-rights are being attacked.
The 36th anniversary of the ADA cannot be treated only as a celebration of past progress. It must be a call to protect that progress and continue the work that remains unfinished. Rights have meaning only when they are enforced, and community living is possible only when investments are made in accessible and affordable housing, reliable transportation, personal assistance, healthcare, integrated employment supports, and a stable, fairly compensated direct-care workforce.
The Independent Living Movement was built by people with disabilities who refused to let others decide what was best for us. We organized, protested, blocked traffic, occupied government buildings, crawled up the steps of the U.S. Capitol, and put our bodies on the line to demand the freedom, equality, rights, and opportunities that should have always been ours.
As we celebrate the progress secured through the ADA, that same determination must guide us now. We must continue the work of making the ADA’s promise a reality, and we will not accept a return to segregation, isolation, or institutionalization.
Nothing about us without us. Disability rights are civil rights. Our freedom is not negotiable.
Jennifer Watson is the Executive Director of the Southern Tier Independence Center.