{"id":19294,"date":"2026-07-01T15:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T15:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=19294"},"modified":"2026-07-01T15:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T15:32:08","slug":"trumps-actions-signal-a-move-toward-institutionalizing-people-with-disabilities-advocates-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=19294","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s actions signal a move toward institutionalizing people with disabilities, advocates warn"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By ANNIE MA, AP Education Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 For decades, disabled people have fought for their rights to go to school and live alongside peers without disabilities \u2014 rights that some fear could be losing ground under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Read more California bans \u2018sell by\u2019 food labels to cut food waste and confusion<\/a><\/p>\n

Last month, the Education Department announced it would offload oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose comments on the limits of disabilities such as autism have drawn sharp rebukes from advocates and lawmakers.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, following a White House push to police homelessness, the Department of Justice released guidance that lowered the barrier to institutionalizing any person with a disability.<\/p>\n

Taken together, the actions signal a worrying return to a reality where people with disabilities are pushed to the margins of society, advocates said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a direct, frontal assault on the rights of people with disabilities to live their lives the way that people who are nondisabled live their lives,\u201d said Selene Almazan, legal director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine that as a country, that would be something that we would agree we should go back to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The move away from confining people with disabilities<\/h4>\n

Since the 1960s, legislation and court decisions have progressively expanded supports and protections for people with disabilities to go to school with nondisabled peers and to live and work in their communities. Before that, people with mental illnesses or developmental and intellectual disabilities were largely confined to institutions.<\/p>\n

Advocates have pushed back on what\u2019s known as the \u201cmedical model,\u201d where an individual\u2019s disability is viewed as a defect to be cured. Instead, under a \u201csocial model\u201d of disability, differences can be accommodated and supported, as people with and without disabilities learn and work alongside each other.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Families and advocates have warned that moving special education to a health department marks a return to the medical model. They\u2019ve also been angered by Kennedy\u2019s attempts to link vaccines to autism, going against decades of research that show no such link, and his framing of autism as a debilitating disease.<\/p>\n

Kennedy\u2019s comments last year, where he said children with autism would never write a poem, pay taxes or hold a job, raised questions about how he would oversee an agency meant to help students develop those skills. Kennedy later said he was referring to people with \u201d severe autism \u2033 or those who are nonverbal.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the things he said autistic people will never do, (special education) is in charge of making sure students with disabilities have the opportunity to do,\u201d said Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. \u201cWill he execute that faithfully, or does he consider disabled students a lost cause until we find some medical cure?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court weighs in<\/h4>\n

In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that segregating disabled people who are otherwise able to live in their community with proper supports was a form of discrimination. The Olmstead v. L.C. decision led to requirements that government agencies provide disability services in the most integrated setting possible \u2014 in mainstream schools, homes and workplaces.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

But in a memo issued in June, the Department of Justice\u2019s Office of Legal Counsel upended that guidance. It argued that neither the Americans with Disabilities Act nor Section 504, two major disability rights laws, requires states to provide services in the most mainstream setting. While the memo does not change the law, it signals how federal agencies may interpret and enforce civil rights issues related to the topic \u2014 and it could embolden states or school districts to decline to support people with disabilities in mainstream environments.<\/p>\n

The White House has already acted on a similar philosophy. Last year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on homelessness that endorsed civil commitment, where a court orders individuals into involuntary hospitalization or treatment programs. Trump directed HHS to reduce barriers to institutionalizing people with mental illnesses.<\/p>\n

In its memo, the Justice Department acknowledged its interpretation of the Supreme Court\u2019s Olmstead decision is \u201cout of step\u201d with the common understanding. If a state starts to provide services in institutional settings, legal challenges likely would follow, the DOJ said.<\/p>\n

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The Trump administration\u2019s steps fit a worldview in which the government has no obligation to support people with disabilities, said Claudia Center, legal director at Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s dark, and it\u2019s awful,\u201d Center said. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s contrary to the majority view in our country. \u2026 It\u2019s out of touch with where our society is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Families say their kids thrive in mainstream classes<\/h4>\n

The moves have created a deep sense of uncertainty for students with disabilities.<\/p>\n

Lindsey Althaus says home and community-based services in northwest Ohio have been instrumental to her family. Her 12-year-old son, Whitman, has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, in which the brain struggles to tell muscles how to move to form words or perform other motor skills. For some of his school career, with proper support services, Whitman was able to spend much of his school day in a classroom that included kids without disabilities.<\/p>\n

Through a Medicaid waiver program, Althaus pays her mother to care for Whitman in her absence. That allows him to spend time out in the community with his grandmother while Althaus and her husband are working or away with their daughter.<\/p>\n

Under the Justice Department\u2019s new interpretation of Olmsted, states would have fewer obligations to fund and support those programs. And Kennedy, in testimony to lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year, criticized similar programs as subject to fraud.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be able to have him in the community,\u201d said Althaus, who works as a disability rights advocate. \u201cIt\u2019s just starting to feel like Whitman\u2019s not going to be welcome anymore. We\u2019re going back to this: You\u2019re either perfect, or you\u2019re not in the light.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many students with disabilities, schools are where they receive the majority of support services and where they are integrated among their peers. Before Magda Nakassis\u2019s 8-year-old son, who is autistic and nonverbal, started public school in Maryland, his preschool experience had largely been defined by being kicked out of things, she said.<\/p>\n

In school, Nakassis said, she found teachers and staff members who understood her son\u2019s needs and told her to stop apologizing for them. A program at his school called Fantastic Friends teaches mainstream fifth graders about autism, and they spend recesses with children in the autism program. Every year, Nakassis said, there is a waitlist to be a Fantastic Friend.<\/p>\n

Nakassis said that it has been difficult to see the ways autism in particular has become politicized. Every child is entitled to a public education in this country, Nakassis said, and special education is a response to the fact that some children have differences that require additional support.<\/p>\n

Regardless of his diagnosis, his right to an education is not a medical issue, she said, but rather a question of equity and access in a society that often pushes disabled people to the margins.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are lots of kids like him out there, and I sometimes wonder, \u2018what did we use to do?\u2019\u201d Nakassis said. \u201cI can\u2019t believe it was better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Associated Press\u2019 education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more As the Pentagon stays quiet, AP reconstructs a US strike that killed over 100 Iranian children<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disability advocates warn that recent Trump administration policies on special education and institutionalization threaten decades of progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-based-on-facts-either-observed-and-verified-directly-by-the-reporter-or-reported-and-verified-from-knowledgeable-sources","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump\u2019s actions signal a move toward institutionalizing people with disabilities, advocates warn - Silicon Valley Moving Post<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=19294\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump\u2019s actions signal a move toward institutionalizing people with disabilities, advocates warn - 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