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The right of disabled people to live in community rather than being warehoused in institutions is under attack in a lawsuit currently being pursued by Texas and six other states. But advocacy efforts are persuading states to pull out of the suit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Secretary of HHS Robert F. Kennedy Jr., called Texas v. Kennedy.

Two state plaintiffs withdrew from the case in May after hearing concerns from the disability community, bringing the number of remaining state plaintiffs to only seven in an amended case that began with seventeen.

“[The case] could really alter the legal landscape for people with disabilities who have support needs,” Claudia Center, legal director at Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), told Truthout. Alongside Texas, the other state plaintiffs are Alaska, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Montana. Indiana and South Dakota dropped this month.

The lawsuit targets Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a landmark piece of disability rights legislation that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in federal programs or programs that receive federal funding. Since that legislation, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), came into force, federal guidance and court rulings have helped clarify how the laws must be applied and who is protected under them.

Texas v. Kennedy also targets some of those precedents, especially a body of regulations and decisions often collectively called Olmstead (or Olmstead rules), which ban the unnecessary segregation of disabled people and allow them to receive services in the community rather than in institutions. The name comes from the 1999 Supreme Court decision in Olmstead v. L.C., which held that segregating disabled people when needed support could be provided in community is a form of discrimination prohibited by the ADA.

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If a decision in Texas v. Kennedy narrows existing protections under disability rights law, federal regulations, and legal precedents, Center told Truthout, “disabled people could be pushed into institutional settings,” adding: “Some of them depending on their disabilities and situations, could be pushed into jails and prisons, and some would die. We certainly have seen deaths in the past when support programs for people with disabilities have been cut.”

Seventeen state plaintiffs first filed the case during the Biden administration as Texas v. Becerra after the agency released a long-awaited rule updating Section 504. The updated rule strengthened anti-discrimination protections and the right of disabled people with support needs to receive home and community-based services. The rule clarifies that the so-called integration mandate, first outlined in the ADA, requires entities receiving federal dollars to serve disabled people in the most integrated setting appropriate, one that “provide[s] opportunities to live, work, and........

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