After states sue, Trump administration walks away from disability rights enforcement

A lawsuit filed by conservative-led states to block transgender protections concluded instead with the Trump administration joining the plaintiffs to strip community-integration language from a federal disability-rights regulation. A judge granted that request last week in Texas v. Kennedy, removing references that had directed states to prioritize home and community care over institutions under Section 504.

The Department of Justice separately issued a June memo arguing federal law doesn't actually require states to provide community-based services for disabled people, a reversal of decades of federal enforcement built on the 1999 Olmstead decision. Advocates and families, including a Louisiana mother whose toddler relies on publicly funded therapies, say the change removes the federal monitoring that made the right to community living more than words on paper.

HHS and DOJ both told Stateline their commitment to disability rights is unchanged, even as the regulation they just helped gut said otherwise. States like Florida and Alaska framed the outcome as restored flexibility and a check on federal overreach, rather than, as advocates describe it, one more retreat from a decades-old civil rights guarantee.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.