UPDATE: Court Issues Landmark Disability Decision for People with Intellectual Disabilities in Texas’ Nursing Facilities
On June 17, 2025, a Texas federal judge ruled that State officials are violating federal law, causing irreparable harm to thousands of Texans with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) who they segregate in nursing facilities without mandated services or opportunities for community living. After presiding over a multi-week trial in the class action lawsuit in Steward v. Young, US District Court Judge Orlando L. Garcia from the Western District of Texas issued a 475-page opinion requiring the parties to submit a proposed remedial order by August 1, 2025.
For decades, the State has unnecessarily institutionalized up to 4,000 Texans with IDD in segregated nursing facilities and denied them specialized disability services which are required by federal law. More than a decade ago, twelve individuals with IDD, together with two state-wide disability organizations, filed a class action case asking the federal court to halt these federal law violations. CPR, together with its partners Disability Rights Texas and Sidley Austin LLP, represented the plaintiff class. Shortly thereafter, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) intervened to support the people with disabilities.
In his comprehensive opinion, Judge Garcia ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and DOJ on all claims. The judge meticulously reviewed the facts, relying in significant part on the testimony of the plaintiffs, their families, disability providers and organizational leaders, and national experts. The decision detailed the harm and deprivations suffered by plaintiffs due to the state’s systemic failures and longstanding violations of federal laws, including the Nursing Home Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act, and the Medicaid Act.
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CASE HISTORY: Class action on behalf of over 4,000 individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities who are unnecessarily segregated in nursing facilities in Texas, in violation of the ADA, § 504, the Medicaid Act, and the Nursing Home Reform Amendments to the Act.
In 2013, the parties negotiated an interim settlement that included community placements, enhanced services and admission diversions. But a new governor refused to sign a comprehensive final agreement that had been negotiated between the parties and the United States. As a result, the case was actively litigated over the next five years, after the court denied the State’s motion to dismiss and certified a class.
Notably, the class includes three men, now in their 60s, who were among a few dozen Texans with disabilities sent to work on a turkey farm in Iowa in the 1970s. Their harrowing life was memorialized by New York Times writer Dan Barry in a 2014 expose and a book titled “The Boys in the Bunkhouse” – described by his publisher as a “Dickensian tale of the exploitation and abuse of a resilient group of men with intellectual disability.” The turkey farm has shut down, but the men are now stuck in a nursing facility. Many class members have suffered further harm during what the plaintiffs’ expert called their “medically unjustified institutionalizations” as well as the pervasive lack of active treatment. The plaintiffs filed a Motion for Preliminary Injunction on their PASRR and NHRA claims, which was heard in June 2017.
After extensive expert discovery, the Court oversaw a five-week trial in October-November 2018, and then received the parties’ proposed findings and conclusions in February 2019.
Co-counsel include Disability Rights Texas and Sidley Austin, LLP; the United States Department of Justice is the plaintiff-intervenor.