Disability advocates are urging Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr to withdraw from a controversial lawsuit to avoid any potential harm to Georgians with disabilities. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
Advocates are turning up the heat on Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr to withdraw from a GOP-led lawsuit that they say threatens protections for people with disabilities.
Carr joined 16 other states in a lawsuit filed in September against the federal government over the Biden administration’s addition of a gender identity-related disorder to the disabilities protected under a section of a 1973 federal law.
But those attorneys general are facing a growing public backlash that stems from conflicting messages about what the lawsuit would actually do, Stateline reported in February. Critics of the lawsuit point to parts of the lawsuit in which the plaintiffs ask the court to find an entire section of the law unconstitutional.
The provision in question, Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, prohibits entities that receive federal funding from discriminating based on disability.
Carr said in a statement this week that the lawsuit is only about fighting “the Biden-Harris administration’s obsession with promoting a radical, progressive transgender ideology at every turn.”
“Georgians shouldn’t have their tax dollars go towards treating ‘transgender dysphoria’ as a disability, and we refuse to stand by while children with Down Syndrome, Dyslexia, and Autism are sacrificed at the altar of wokism,” Carr said in the statement.
The case was paused after President Donald Trump took office in January to give the new administration time to reevaluate the federal government’s position. The Republican state attorneys general also submitted a court filing known as a “status report” in February to clarify publicly that their intention is not to take away protections for people with disabilities.
“The lawsuit being referenced in no way, shape, or form would affect Georgia’s existing 504 disability program,” Carr’s spokesperson, Kara Murray, said in a statement this week.
But disability advocates gathered at the state Capitol were unassuaged Wednesday, noting that the actual lawsuit remains unchanged. They are calling for the case to be dismissed or for Carr to withdraw Georgia from the lawsuit to avoid any potential harm to some of the state’s most vulnerable residents.
“It’s putting families under terrible anxiety and fear, and that is the other point that I think the attorneys general really need to understand is that count three (of the lawsuit) is still the language of count three, and families are terrified,” said D’Arcy Robb, executive director of the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities.
Leslie Lipson, an attorney with Lipson Advocacy, which is part of the Georgia Coalition for Equity in Education, said if state officials mean what they say, then they should withdraw from the lawsuit. Or at a minimum, the attorneys general should drop the part of the lawsuit that is seen as compromising Section 504, she said.
“I think most of us would agree that we’ve seen things that we couldn’t imagine during times of transition, and that’s not a political statement. It’s just that there’s a lot of unknowns, and this is something we really don’t want to gamble with,” Lipson said.
A small group of demonstrators also gathered outside of Carr’s office this week near the Capitol, chanting phrases like “Hey hey, ho ho, this lawsuit has got to go” and “Chris Carr, you’ve gone too far.”
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