Black History Month: The Right to Community Inclusion
This is a special post written by Charles Warren, Curriculum Developer at Triangle. Charlie is also a member of Triangle’s Racial Equity Committee (REC) and Disability Justice Task Force (DJTF). As part of our commitment to the work of the REC and DJTF, we will be sharing more information with you on subjects related to racial equity and disability justice. This post continues our series dedicated to calling attention to the contributions of people with disabilities to American history.
Prior to 1999, people with different types of disabilities did not have an established legal right to live, and receive appropriate services, in their communities. Many individuals with disabilities who advocated for themselves and would have benefited from community inclusion were forced to remain in institutions where living conditions were frequently dismal for many years.
This status quo was changed through the advocacy of Lois Curtis (1967 – 2022), a Black woman with disabilities who lived in a Georgia state hospital from the ages of 11 to 29. Despite a positive assessment for community living, Curtis remained in an institutional setting for several years until a case was brought on her behalf by Atlanta Legal Aid Society. In 1997, they won their case in federal district court. The state of Georgia appealed the decision, arguing that there were insufficient funds to care for disabled individuals in more integrated settings. The following year, the district court’s decision was affirmed by the federal appeals court, but once again, the state of Georgia appealed the case, this time to the United States Supreme Court.
The case (Olmstead v. L.C.) made its way to the Supreme Court in 1999, and the decision in favor of Curtis had far-reaching implications for individuals with different types of disabilities. Not only did the case establish that individuals with disabilities have the right to live in community settings and that unnecessary institutionalization constituted a violation of an individual’s civil rights, it also affirmed that mental illness is a form of disability and, therefore, covered by the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This case precipitated a massive shift in the way people with disabilities are empowered to live independently in their communities and firmly expanded the protections of the ADA to individual with mental disabilities.
Click here to read an earlier blog post to learn more about Lois Curtis!
