News and Alerts

Today, a coalition of nearly 50 advocacy groups and state legislators, led by the Center for Public Representation, The Arc of the United States, The Arc of Virginia, and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, sent a letter calling on Virginia Governor Northam to right a decade of unjust treatment in a criminal justice system infected with systemic racism and ableism faced by Reginald “Neli” Latson, a young Black man with autism and intellectual disability.  The letter demands that Governor Northam grant Mr. Latson a full pardon, commit to continue funding his disability services in Florida where he and his family now reside, and issue a public apology to Mr. Latson and his family.

Today, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced the resolution of a federal complaint filed against Tennessee, one of nearly a dozen complaints filed by CPR, together with a coalition of national disability advocates, challenging states’ plans for rationing medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic as discriminating against people with disabilities.

CPR’s seminal analysis of informed choice for institutionalized persons with disabilities has just been published in Volume 40, No.1 of the Journal on Law and Medicine (2020). The article - Realizing the Promise of Olmstead: Ensuring the Informed Choice of Institutionalized Persons with Disabilities to Receive Services in the Most Integrated Setting – traces the history of the issue of choice under the Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. L.C., and proposes a legal analytical framework for ensuring that persons with disabilities can make an informed choice about whether to live and work in an integrated setting rather than remain in a segregated institution.

Today, CPR and partners filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) over Nebraska’s ongoing failure to provide access for Nebraskans with disabilities to TestNebraska. The State’s COVID-19 testing program currently requires the ability to access and use the internet and then the ability to drive to a testing site.

The Connecticut Legal Rights Project, Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law and Center for Public Representation this week filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in a class action case challenging Connecticut’s failure to take adequate steps to protect residents of two state psychiatric hospitals from contracting and dying from COVID-19.  

Today, in response to the first federal complaint challenging discriminatory hospital “no-visitor” policies, filed by CPR and partners last month, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services announced a resolution making clear that federal law requires hospitals and the state agencies overseeing them to modify policies to ensure patients with disabilities can safely access the in-person supports needed to benefit from medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We stand with protesters in communities across the country -- including in the Twin Cities, Atlanta, Louisville, Columbus, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, and Washington, D.C.-- demanding justice and accountability for the murder of George Floyd. The institutional racism that has long infected this country cannot stand. We need to do more as allies. We are listening. As disability lawyers fighting for change, we have a responsibility to change a system that has repeatedly failed to deliver justice for all. We commit to working to understand and address our own implicit bias, to address racism in our work, and to be better allies – to listen, to hear, and to act.

Keeping people out of nursing facilities is especially important now, with COVID-19 ravaging nursing facilities around the country, yet the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed weakening the Preadmission Screening and Resident Review (PASRR) rules designed to help keep people with mental illness or intellectual or developmental disabilities from being unnecessarily placed in Medicaid-funded nursing facilities and to help nursing facility residents transition back to the community. CPR submitted comments on May 18 opposing the proposed rule and created templates to help organizations and individuals submit comments opposing the rule.

On May 18, 2020, CPR and its co-counsel asked the full Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to grant a new hearing in the appeal of the District Court’s decision in Rosie D. v. Baker. On May 4, 2020, a panel of the First Circuit allowed the termination of all court monitoring and reporting obligations in the case, despite continuing federal Medicaid law violations.

Around the country, hospitals and other health care facilities have enacted strict no-visitor policies to contain the spread of COVID-19 that don't include exceptions for people with disabilities who need support from family members or staff to have equal access to medical treatment. To help combat the discrimination people with disabilities are facing as a result of these policies, CPR, together with CommunicationFirst, The Arc, Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Bazelon Center, and DREDF, has released Evaluation Framework for Hospital Visitor Policies.