06/22/2026
Dear family and friends,
I would normally never send or post something of this nature, because I know opinions about politics vary widely in our family-especially one as big as ours! 😉
As many of you know, I am the Vice President of Policy at the American Association of Disabilities, a national, disability-led, cross-disability rights organization that represents the 70 million Americans with disabilities.
What many may not know—particularly if one does not work in public policy as I do—is that over the last week, the Administration announced two unprecedented and frightening moves that threaten to roll back, and even undo more than 50 years of federal disability rights law.
On Monday, June 15, the Secretary of Education announced an Interagency Agreement (IAA) to transfer the Office of Special Education and Rehab Services and the Office of Civil Rights from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice, respectively.
The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services provides oversight, programming, and technical assistance to states, school districts, and parents of students with disabilities so that people like me can receive a “free and appropriate public education” in accordance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
The Office of Civil Rights enforces federal education laws such as Section 504, IDEA, Title IX, FERPA, and sexual assault laws at publicly-funded K-12 and college institutions.
This announcement by the Secretary of Education, particularly the move to transfer OSERS to the Department of Health and Human Services, represents a regression to an outdated, medicalization model of disability as something to be treated, cured, and eliminated, rather than something to be accommodated, included, and integrated into mainstream society.
Moreover, OSERS and OCR are REQUIRED by federal law to be housed at the Department of Education. The Administration’s attempts to outsource these functions to other agencies or Departments is unlawful. Nonetheless, it is the latest effort to shut down the Department of Education while doing an end-run around Congress.
As if the announcement by the Secretary of Education wasn’t alarming enough, on Thursday, June 18, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal guidance to the White House and federal agencies, issued an opinion stating that neither the Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. L.C., nor the Congress in its enactment of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or the Americans with Disabillities created a mandate for the federal and state governments to provide programs and services to people with disabilities in integrated settings to the extent possible.
The OLC opinion further argues that the integration mandate is unconstitutional, and that despite almost 50 years of widely-held understanding of federal disability rights caselaw, regulations, and statutes, states MAY, in fact, warehouse disabled people in the filthy, overcrowded institutions of yesteryear, where they were often subjected to eugenic, unethical medical “experiments” without consent.
Moreover, the OLC opinion argues that these laws also “did not create an obligation for states to address barriers to access to or participation in federally-funded programs or services that arise from the presence of disabilities.
I say all of this to arrive at this point—this is not a matter of political affiliation, this is a matter of whether or not you would know me as the friend, nephew, or cousin Michael you do today: a master ’s-educated, successful professional, homeowner, husband, and father of five.
The OLC opinion plainly acknowledges that their ass-backwards opinion contradicts decades of precedent, and that they further welcome litigation as a way to further their desire to have the federal courts revisit and overturn 50 years of what they believe to be unconstitutional requirements.
From the time I started Pre-K3 in a normal, mainstream classroom, at Peter Noyes in Sudbury, to graduting UNC in 2009 and obtaining a master’s degree in 2017, to climbing the professional ladder, to getting married, having kids, driving a car, owning a home—NONE of it would be possible without the integration mandate in federal disability law that this Administration is trying to claim is unconstitutional, and actually has never existed.
As I said at the outset of this long message (sorry), I would never normally send something of this nature.
But if I could ask just one thing of everyone this one time, it is this: take 10 minutes this week and call the Capitol Switchboard at (202)224-3121 and DEMAND that your Representative and your Senators exercise their oversight authority vested in them as a coequal branch of government and stop these attempts by the Administration to bring us back to a dark era in which people with disabilities were locked away out of sight and out of mind.
I love you all and hope you are well!
Michael
