Advocacy Updates

Join us today, August 4, for a call-in day to urge the Senate to include funding for home and community-based services (HCBS) in the coronavirus relief bill being negotiated. Even if you’ve called or emailed before, or shared your HCBS story on social media, please contact your Senators again. They need to hear from all of us and they need to hear from us NOW!

The Senate has released a new coronavirus relief package, the HEALS Act, that fails to address the disability community’s most urgent priorities. We need everyone to take action and push your Senators to include our priorities in the relief package that ultimately passes the Senate, so please contact them now!

CPR, together with a coalition of national and state disability and civil rights advocacy groups, has filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) challenging the crisis standard of care plans in Arizona and Texas, two states hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a State Medicaid Director letter announcing another delay in the timeline for states to fully implement the Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) Settings Rule, extending the deadline by one year to March 2023. We oppose delaying the March 2022 deadline – still over 20 months away – by another year at this time. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the risks of large congregate settings and made the Rule’s focus on more individualized supports in smaller and non-disability specific settings more important than ever.

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.

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.

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.

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.