DOJ memo – A new Justice Department memo from the Office of Legal Counsel says states are not required to provide in-home or community-based care for people with disabilities in the most integrated setting. Disability advocates warn the change could weaken decades of civ
The Justice Department memo landed quietly, but the reaction did not.
Advocates for people with disabilities say a legal opinion issued by the Office of Legal Counsel this week calls into question decades of civil-rights protections for Americans who need support to live among family. friends. and the communities they choose. The memo argues that states do not have to provide in-home or community-based care—and that shook a core premise of U.S. disability law that has guided enforcement for years.
“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. ” said 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.”.
The concern is not abstract. Without a federal requirement that community services be provided. advocates warn cash-strapped states could scale back supports that help disabled Americans live. learn. and work at home—pushing more people back into nursing homes and large institutions. a pattern disability rights efforts worked for decades to reverse.
The American Association of People with Disabilities said the memo threatens to pull the country backward. “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. ” the group said. “This interpretation will open the doors for states to revert to warehousing people with disabilities out of sight and out of mind in institutions.”.
Shira Wakschlag of The Arc of the United States. a nonprofit disability advocacy group. said the memo would add coercion where people need choice. “This opinion is a direct threat to decades of progress toward community living for people with disabilities,” she said. “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 a request for an explanation of its position and why it is changing course.
For years, disability advocates and legal experts pointed to a well-settled interpretation of federal law: that people must be served in the most integrated setting appropriate and that institutions should be a last resort.
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 in the most integrated setting appropriate. In Olmstead v. L.C. decided in 1999. two women with mental disabilities sued Georgia. arguing the state failed to provide support that would allow them to return to their communities while continuing to institutionalize them instead. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed that states have a legal responsibility to provide support that integrates disabled Americans into their communities. and that interpretation was embraced by courts across the country for nearly three decades.
By 2023, 8.4 million Americans were receiving home- and community-based services through Medicaid.
The new memo. written by Lanora Pettit. principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel. argues that while federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability. it does not impose an “integration mandate” requiring states to provide community services. The memo also argues that the Olmstead decision “held only that a state cannot institutionalize such patients without justification. ” adding that “What counts as adequate justification remains an open question.” At one point. Pettit acknowledges the novelty of the reading. saying: “We recognize that this view of Olmstead’s import is out of step with the common understanding of that decision within the federal courts.”.
Barkoff said the memo departs sharply from how the federal government has long understood its own obligations. “The United States government since 1977 has taken the position that [federal law] includes an integration mandate that requires services to be provided in the most integrated setting appropriate. ” she said.
For decades, she added, Republican and Democratic administrations—including the first Trump administration—enforced federal disability law and brought actions against states that relied too heavily on care in large, segregated settings.
Jennifer Mathis of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law described the lived impact of institutionalization in stark terms. “Who you can see, when you can go out, when you eat, what you eat. Who your roommate is, who you talk to, what your environment is. And for so many people who are institutionalized, their life is literally a hallway. I have been on those hallways with people. It is deadening.”.
Taken on its face. Barkoff said. the memo represents a major shift in the federal message—one that she fears will reshape what states believe they can do. “We are incredibly concerned that the message coming from the federal government in this memo is. ‘It’s fine to go back to the days that people were placed in institutions. ‘ even though they can be served in the community. even though they want to be and even though it’s more cost-effective. ” she said.
The memo’s timing has made disability advocates even more alert. It arrives as a new case, Texas v. Kennedy, moves through the courts. The case, brought by Texas and several other states, is described as a challenge to the integration mandate on states. With this memo, the federal government is aligning itself with the plaintiffs in that case.
But Mathis cautioned that the memo is not the law itself. “It’s important to understand that [this memo] is not the law, that the Justice Department can’t change the law. Congress makes laws, not agencies.”
For now, it’s not clear what the immediate impact will be, though advocates say the Justice Department likely will stop its enforcement efforts around Olmstead.
The memo also arrives amid broader federal moves that disability advocates see as part of a pattern: pushing institutions more aggressively into policy areas where civil-rights enforcement has long resisted segregation.
The Justice Department’s legal opinion comes after President Trump issued an executive order on July 24. 2025. aimed at making it easier for state and local governments to police homelessness. The order argued that “Endemic vagrancy. disorderly behavior. sudden confrontations. and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe. ” and claimed that “the overwhelming majority of these individuals are addicted to drugs. have a mental health condition. or both.” It cited involuntary institutionalization as the solution. saying “Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.”.
In a 2023 campaign video. Trump pledged. “For those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed. we will bring them back to mental institutions. where they belong.” A conservative Texas think tank. the Cicero Institute. has pushed efforts to combat homelessness through forceful measures. including institutionalization.
One obstacle, advocates say, is federal disability law—often understood to require home- or community-based services when appropriate. A footnote in the Justice Department’s new memo appears to suggest those protections have contributed to chronic homelessness.
Barkoff rejected that framing. The Olmstead decision, she said, has been “one of the most effective tools in providing services and stable housing to people who are homeless.”
In addition, NPR has previously reported that a key barrier to large-scale institutionalization of the unhoused is a shortage of beds at specialized facilities.
The memo also arrives as Republicans have passed deep cuts to Medicaid. the primary source of funding for community-based services many disabled Americans rely on. Multiple legal experts told NPR that. in response to last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. states must now make deep cuts to a whole range of services previously funded by Medicaid. They said the Trump administration’s memo effectively gives states permission to cut localized supports and instead rely on institutionalization. even though research shows the latter costs states considerably more.
Disability advocates say the fear is not limited to one memo. The Justice Department opinion comes as advocates were already pushing back against the Trump administration’s announcement on Tuesday that it would move federal administration of special education programs out of the Department of Education and into the Department of Health and Human Services—another change they say raises concerns about rollback of enforcement of long-standing civil-rights protections.
At the center of all of it is a single, powerful question: whether the federal government’s position will continue to push states toward integration—or whether it will make institutionalization easier to justify, even for people who want to live where they can see their own lives unfold.
DOJ memo Office of Legal Counsel disability rights Olmstead v. L.C. integration mandate Americans with Disabilities Act Rehabilitation Act Medicaid institutionalization home and community-based services Texas v. Kennedy homelessness executive order