Excluding and Denying People With Disabilities in Their "America," Not Yours.
EVERYONE with special needs is a target. You, too, Post-Polio Survivors.
(Author Photo)
It is currently illegal to discriminate under Federal grants and programs. Maybe not for much longer.
Section 794 of Title 29 of the United States Code bars Nondiscrimination under Federal grants and programs.
Section 794 is popularly known as Section 504 because that is how it was known when Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act in 1973. Most people have not forgotten. Disabled people in particular remember.
Texas and 16 other States filed a lawsuit 51 years later to declare Nondiscrimination against the Disabled "unconstitutional." They have demanded in their lawsuit in Texas that the Northern District of Texas:
“Declare Section 504, 29 U.S.C. § 794, unconstitutional.”
This is their demand on page 42 of their complaint. By the time you reach their demand, they already spent pages writing about why Section 504 is "unconstitutional" in their America. Download Texas v. Becerra Complaint Doc. No. 1 filed Sept. 26 2024 (N.D. Tex. Case No. 5.24.cv.00225.H).
The lawsuit was filed in Texas by 17 States, a combination of 7 States from what might be called the Old Confederacy led by Texas, of course (minus Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia) and 10 States from the New Confederacy.
The press, in this case as in so many others, has reported the press release about this case, namely, that it is against a Federal Rule to protect transgender people. They may not have even read the complaint itself, which clocks in at 46 pages. If this lawsuit is successful, it will affect the lives of all disabled people in the United States.
The lawsuit is currently looking for a new federal defendant. When the complaint was filed in September, 2024, they sued Xavier Becerra, who was then the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Becerra's name is still on the case, but that will change very soon in all likelihood when a new federal government takes his place in the lawsuit.
It is not difficult to predict how the people currently in charge of your federal government, or think they are, will respond when they answer this lawsuit. So far, they have made vulnerable people their targets.
The Texas lawsuit is ready and waiting for them.
Based on their past behavior, it seems certain that they are going to take this opportunity to continue to take rights away from the people who they think are the least equipped to fight back.
It is reasonable to predict that their targets, sooner or later and almost certainly sooner, will be women, children, Blacks, the poor, and individuals with a disability.
Including people who were children with Polio and who are now adults with Post-Polio Syndrome.
What, then, are the possible responses to this Demand to "Declare Section 504, 29 U.S.C. § 794, unconstitutional?" There are many possible responses. I will leave it to others more familiar with this area than I am, to craft all the responses that are possible, but here I will write about one, intervention. Intervention is both a possible legal response and a possible practical response. Here's what I mean.
Intervention is available as a legal response here. Some group or groups as yet unknown may ask the court for leave to intervene for the purpose of defending Section 504. After all, there is no-one left in this case to defend the law. Even though the chances of blocking mistreatment of the disabled are probably not very good in the Texas case, there will still be what lawyers call a record that someone stood up to defend the current American law.
When I suggest intervention as a possible practical response, I have this in mind: Intervention by the presence of people presenting all kinds of disabilities in the courtroom in which this judge will decide the fate of discrimination under Federal grants and programs. From experience, I know that it is harder for judges to rule against people in cases like this who are in the judge's courtroom and who the judges can see.
All this will make it harder for the judge in this Texas case to rule openly against them.
People with disabilities with their wheelchairs, scooters, crutches, walkers, and helpers will make for irresistible photos and videos for the press. As Mr. Fred Gailey, the fictional lawyer for Kris Kringle said in the movie, Miracle on 34th Street, "If I'm going to win this case, I'll need publicity, and lots of it."
And this lawsuit will be seen for what it is. There is a reason that they do not want anyone to see what they are doing. You may not have heard of this lawsuit yourself before today. Perhaps there will be a greater chance of defending the law, once the rest of the nation hears and sees, too.
At the very least, then there will likely be a much greater chance of defending the American law than there is now, if things are not changed.
Thanks for reading Claims and Issues! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and follow my work here. I published an article on this same topic on Claims and Bad Faith Law Blog on Wednesday, February 19, 2025.