The text of a speech by Meghan Schrader on July 3rd at an ADAPT of Texas rally to save the 2024 Final Rule’s updates to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.
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| Meghan Schrader |
Disability activist and member of the EPC-USA Board
I am asking Attorney General Paxton to show compassion and respect to disabled people by dropping the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit, which seeks to have the 2024 Final Rule’s updates to Section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act, one of our nation’s flagship disability access laws, declared unconstitutional.
Some decent people I’ve tried to talk to about Texas vs. Kennedy dismiss disability advocates’ concerns about this lawsuit as “woke hysteria.” But the accessibility guidelines that are outlined in the Final Rule are not “woke politics” or a culture war issue, they are a matter of human dignity.
The practices outlined in the Final Rule are necessary to meet the human family’s moral obligations to people with disabilities.
The Declaration of Independence says,
I am asking Attorney General Paxton to show compassion and respect to disabled people by dropping the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit, which seeks to have the 2024 Final Rule’s updates to Section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act, one of our nation’s flagship disability access laws, declared unconstitutional.
Some decent people I’ve tried to talk to about Texas vs. Kennedy dismiss disability advocates’ concerns about this lawsuit as “woke hysteria.” But the accessibility guidelines that are outlined in the Final Rule are not “woke politics” or a culture war issue, they are a matter of human dignity.
The practices outlined in the Final Rule are necessary to meet the human family’s moral obligations to people with disabilities.
The Declaration of Independence says,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."All of the practices outlined in the Final Rule give disabled Americans new opportunities to exercise the unalienable rights that our Creator endowed us with.
Disabled Americans need the Final Rule’s guidance for accessible medical equipment, better internet access and better treatment of disabled parents.
We need the prohibitions on prejudicial “quality of life” judgements by medical personnel that push disabled people towards death.
We need the Final Rule’s clarification of a 27-year-old federal community integration mandate that states not unnecessarily institutionalize disabled people because of a lack of community support.
The Final Rule’s clarification of what integrated settings look like and how to achieve them will give more disabled people opportunities to experience joys that nondisabled citizens take for granted: to see the sun sparkling on water, to hear a bird singing, to eat dinner with our families, to worship with our faith communities.
The practices outlined in the Final Rule will create new employment opportunities. For instance, the Final Rule’s new protections for internet access that have been delayed would help me significantly.
Nowadays all work responsibilities require facility with the internet, and today’s increasingly visually-spatially complex website and app layouts are becoming inaccessible to someone with my neurological disabilities. This situation caused burdensome and embarrassing difficulties while I was working toward my masters degree in Special Education. Barriers to internet access make it much more difficult for me to do my part time job teaching other people with developmental disabilities, and limit the employment options available to me.
Many disabled people are in this situation-we want to work, but the social structures for us to perform at our best aren’t there. The practices outlined in the Final Rule will make employment more likely.
More disabled people will be able to earn our own money, have employer-provided health insurance, and enjoy other pathways to independence.
The Final Rule is also necessary for disabled people to enjoy our right to life. The Final Rule’s guidance on accessible medical equipment makes life-sustaining healthcare more available and humane. The Final Rule contains specific prohibitions on infanticide, futile care laws and any medical practice that is motivated by the belief that disabled people are a burden or that our lives are not worth living.
For years the disability access movement has worked with people from across the political spectrum to oppose situations in which disabled infants with treatable conditions are left to die.
We have opposed futile care statutes that allow physicians to withhold life-saving treatment from disabled people against our will. We have opposed assisted suicide laws that treat the suicides of nondisabled people as preventable tragedies and the suicides of disabled people as beneficial “medical procedures.” The Final Rule contains the best protections that society has had against these practices in decades.
The scaffolding for the Final Rule was laid by statutes like Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Olmstead LC, the 1999 SCOTUS decision that disabled people could not be unnecessarily institutionalized because of lack of community support.
Yet the original version of this lawsuit sought to repeal Section 504 entirely. A recent Department of Justice slip opinion declares that there is no federal community integration mandate.
The argument made against the Final Rule’s updated community integration mandate in Texas vs. Kennedy is the same argument that was used to defend unnecessary institutionalization in the Olmstead case. This pattern suggests that Texas vs. Kennedy is an attempt not only to vitiate the Final Rule, but to overturn or radically reinterpret Olmstead itself.
This action would be inconsistent with the principles that the United States was founded on.
The American Dream has always included the equal opportunity to be part of our communities, to have jobs, to educate ourselves, to raise our families and protect our own lives.Access protections like Olmstead, Section 504 and the Final Rule are necessary for disabled people to do this.
This year we celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. The Final Rule is a critically needed solution to counterproductive loopholes in our nation’s disability laws. But one of the reasons that I am proud to be an American is that the United States has had some of the world’s strongest disability access laws for decades. So, weakening or repealing these protections is inconsistent with our nation’s heritage. US history and tradition supports specifically defined, vigorously enforced disability access protocols.
Dropping this lawsuit would show that Texas is committed to defending innocent people’s lives.
It would communicate a conviction that disabled and nondisabled people are equal, from the tiniest baby, to the most elderly person. I hope Attorney General Paxton will do the right thing and drop the Texas vs. Kennedy lawsuit.
Author Note: Here is the contact information for Attorney General Paxton’s office. You can also use this link to ask the Attorney General to withdraw.
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