Statement from Paraquad President & CEO on the Department of Justice’s Memo Regarding Disability Rights and Community Living
For more than 55 years, Paraquad has championed the right of people with disabilities to live, work, and thrive in their communities.
Recent guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice has raised significant concerns about the future of community living and the civil rights protections established under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the landmark Olmstead decision.
Today, Paraquad President & CEO, Latosha R. Fowlkes, LCSW, issued a statement reaffirming our commitment to the principles of independence, inclusion, and community living.
People with disabilities deserve the opportunity to make their own choices, direct their own lives, and participate fully in their communities. That commitment has guided our work for more than five decades, and it continues today.
“On June 18, 2026, the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo arguing that neither the Rehabilitation Act nor the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) require states to provide services to people with disabilities in community settings rather than institutions. In plain terms, this memo guts the legal foundation that has kept hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities out of institutions for the past 25 years.
It reinterprets the landmark 1999 Supreme Court case Olmstead v. L.C. narrowly, claiming the ruling only said unjustified institutionalization can be discrimination, not that states must actively move people into community settings. It then argues the federal regulations that have enforced community integration since the late 1970s exceed agency authority and should be rescinded.
For people with disabilities, this is not a legal technicality. The integration mandate and Olmstead enforcement have been the primary tools used to force states to fund home and community-based services, help people who want to live in the community get out of nursing facilities and institutions when states have failed to invest in alternatives, and hold states accountable when community capacity goes unfunded. Stripping that mandate does not create "flexibility," it creates permission for states to warehouse people with disabilities in institutions rather than invest in the community supports they need to live independently.
‘The right of people with disabilities to live, work, and participate fully in their communities is not a policy preference. It is the law, and it has been the law for decades. This memo is a deliberate attempt to make institutionalization legally acceptable again by stripping away the enforcement tools that have protected that right. Paraquad will not stand by while the federal government rewrites civil rights history at the expense of the people we serve.’”