🇺🇸 영어 원문
The Justice Department released a memo this week that quietly calls into question decades of civil rights protections for Americans with disabilities and stirred fear and anger among advocates and families.
The memo, an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel, argues that states do not have to provide in-home or community-based care to people with disabilities who need support. These services allow many disabled Americans to continue to live, learn and work at home or in their own communities, among family and friends.
“It is now the position of the United States government that people with disabilities don’t have a right to be part of their communities,” says Alison Barkoff, a health law and policy professor at George Washington University who led disability law and policy efforts during both the Obama and Biden administrations. “I can’t overstate how significant this change in position is.”
Without the federal government requiring that states provide these services – to help disabled people integrate into their communities – advocates and legal experts warn that cash-strapped states could cut them and return to what was once common practice: de facto segregation of Americans with disabilities in nursing homes and large institutions.
“As America prepares to celebrate 250 years of independence, [this memo] threatens to drag our nation back to a dark and shameful era of ignorance and cruelty,” said the American Association of People with Disabilities. “This interpretation will open the doors for states to revert to warehousing people with disabilities out of sight and out of mind in institutions.”
“This opinion is a direct threat to decades of progress toward community living for people with disabilities,” said Shira Wakschlag of The Arc of the United States, a nonprofit disability advocacy group. “People with disabilities shouldn’t be forced into institutions because a state refuses to provide services in the community.”
The Justice Department did not respond to an NPR request that it explain its position as well as why it is changing course after decades of legal and bipartisan support for community services.
This new memo calls into question what legal experts say has been settled law for decades.
Both Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act have long been interpreted to require that states provide services to Americans with disabilities in the most integrated setting appropriate. In short: Institutionalization should be a last resort.
In 1999, a case testing these protections made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Olmstead v. L.C., two women with mental disabilities sued Georgia, arguing that the state had failed its obligation to provide services that would allow them to return to their communities and that it had continued to institutionalize the women instead, thus violating their civil rights.
The court agreed that states have a legal responsibility to provide support that integrates disabled Americans into their communities, and for nearly three decades, courts across the country have embraced that interpretation.
By 2023, 8.4 million Americans were receiving home- and community-based services through Medicaid.
🇰🇷 한국어 요약
미국 법무부가 장애인들의 권리를 보호해온 수십 년간의 규정을 의심하는 메모를 발표했습니다. 이 메모는 주 정부가 장애인들에게 가정이나 지역사회 기반의 돌봄 서비스를 제공할 의무가 없다고 주장합니다. 이는 많은 장애인들이 가족과 친구들 사이에서 살아가고 일할 수 있게 해주는 중요한 서비스입니다. 전문가들은 이 변화가 장애인들이 지역사회에 참여할 권리를 박탈하는 것이며, 이로 인해 장애인들이 다시 요양원이나 대규모 시설에 격리될 수 있다고 우려했습니다. 과거 대법원 판례는 통합된 환경에서 서비스를 제공해야 한다고 명시했지만, 새로운 해석은 이러한 진전을 위협하고 있습니다.
🔑 핵심 단어 (Vocabulary)
- institutionalization – 제도화/시설 수용 – return to institutionalization
- civil rights – 시민권 – decades of civil rights protections
- integration – 통합 – integrate into their communities
- segregation – 분리/격리 – de facto segregation
- obligation – 의무 – failed its obligation
- interpretation – 해석 – legal interpretation
- advocates – 옹호자/활동가 – advocates and families
- Medicaid – 의료보조금 – services through Medicaid
- protections – 보호 – civil rights protections
- community-based – 지역사회 기반 – community-based care