The first time I walked into an institution that housed people with disabilities it was hushed and sterile, hardly a place where anyone would thrive.
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Now, about 50 years later, I shudder to think we could be headed back there. But a recent memo from the Trump Department of Justice suggests we may be.
The memo, written by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, takes aim at the longstanding practice of providing in-home or community-based care for people with disabilities. It argues that states are not mandated to provide such services, despite decades of legal interpretation to the contrary.
Here’s the very real danger of this shift: Without a mandate, underfunded states may be forced to slash services and return to an era when people with disabilities were cut off from their families and relegated to institutions.
Such a retreat is hardly surprising. After all, this is an administration that has already turned the clock back on the rights of women, minorities and immigrants.
But this action is particularly alarming because it seems to be just one part of a broader attack on the protections and rights of some of our most vulnerable citizens.
Last month, for instance, the administration took steps to move oversight of special education from the downsized Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services, under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy, of course, has been outspoken in his unfounded and, frankly, reckless theories about autism. In remarks that were particularly misleading, he said that many children with autism will never pay taxes, hold a job, play baseball, write a poem, go out on a date or use a toilet unassisted.
Clearly, Kennedy is not just out of step with today’s thinking on autism. He’s also at odds with the work of his family, especially the advocacy of his late aunt Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics and championed the rights of people with disabilities.
Can — or should — we even trust him?
Then there’s President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which cut Medicaid services. Many of those services are essential to the well-being of people with disabilities. Let’s also not forget the video of then-candidate Trump in November 2015 seemingly mocking the disability of a New York Times reporter.
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It’s all sickening.
I was a Florida legislator in the 1970s. I’ve seen the institutions that could return if we once again devalue people with disabilities. Among those facilities were the Sunland centers, tuberculosis hospitals reopened in the 1960s as what can best be described as warehouses for people with varying physical and intellectual disabilities.
Together with my colleagues in the Legislature, I led an effort to close two of those centers. Just as important, we worked with state program offices to design and fund community-based group homes where clients could live, socialize and make friends.
For individuals with severe disabilities, we funded community-based clinical programs where they would receive care appropriate to their more challenging needs. But here’s the important distinction: They were not institutionalized.
I vividly remember Sunland — the hallways, the rooms, the people I met. During one of my many visits, I asked a group of clients what they didn’t like about their care. And what they would like to see changed.
In a low, halting voice, one woman named Carol said, “I do not want to be called retarded.” The state agency at the time was called the Retardation Program Office.
In keeping with Carol’s wishes, I filed legislation to change the name. It passed, and the Developmental Services Program Office was born.
For Carol — and all those for whom she spoke — we cannot go back to those days when people with unique abilities were placed in state institutions. It was wrong then. It is wrong now.
Dick Batchelor is an Orlando business consultant and former member of the Florida House of Representatives (1974-82).
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