Charlotte Cravins, left, attends an event with her husband, Calvin Bell, and their children, infant son Landry Bell and daughter Lyric Bell. Landry was born with Down syndrome and is blind in one eye. Charlotte is worried that a lawsuit challenging part of a 50-year-old federal disability rights law could remove protections for children with disabilities, like Landry. (Courtesy of Charlotte Cravins)
A push by Republican attorneys general in 17 states to strike down part of a federal law that protects disabled people from discrimination has prompted an outcry from advocates, parents and some local officials.
The GOP-led lawsuit targets certain protections for transgender people. But some experts warn it has the potential to weaken federal protections for all people with disabilities.
Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the federal government in September over the Biden administration’s addition of a gender identity-related disorder to the disabilities protected under a section of a 1973 federal law.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Republican attorneys general from 16 other states joined the lawsuit: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia.
But the AGs face a growing public backlash that stems from conflicting messages about what the lawsuit would actually do.
If they can erase protections for disabled children, then who’s next?
– Charlotte Cravins, parent of a child with disabilities
“The disability community is outraged and scared,” said Charlotte Cravins, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, attorney whose 1-year-old son has Down syndrome and is blind in one eye.
Cravins and other parents and advocates point to parts of the lawsuit in which the plaintiffs ask the court to find an entire section of the law unconstitutional. If the court agrees, they think it would allow schools, workplaces, hospitals and other entities to refuse to provide accommodations they’ve been required to provide for the past 50 years.
“It would affect so many people that every person in our state — really, in our country — should be concerned,” Cravins said. “If they can erase protections for disabled children, then who’s next?”
The provision in question, Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, prohibits entities that receive federal funding from discriminating based on disability. For example, the law prohibits hospitals from denying organ transplants to people because they have a disability. It requires schools to allow deaf students to use speech-to-text technology. The law covers a wide range of disabilities, including vision and hearing impairments, autism, diabetes, Down syndrome, dyslexia and ADHD.
Last May, the Biden administration issued a rule that added to the covered disabilities “gender dysphoria,” the psychological distress that people may experience when their gender identity doesn’t match their sex assigned at birth. Gender dysphoria is defined in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
In recent days, national disability rights groups — including the American Council of the Blind, the National Down Syndrome Society, the National Association of the Deaf and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund — have encouraged the public to speak out, sparking a surge of activity on social media and calls to state lawmakers.
AGs respond
Despite the public backlash, some state AGs are digging in their heels.
Georgia Republican Attorney General Chris Carr insists the lawsuit wouldn’t affect existing disability protections. Instead, he said, it merely aims to reverse the Biden administration’s addition of gender dysphoria to the law’s protected disabilities.
“The constitutionality of 504 was never in question,” Carr said in a statement to Stateline. “We are fighting one woke policy added by Biden for virtue signaling.”
He said most Georgians don’t believe gender dysphoria should be treated as an eligible disability “as if it’s the same as Down syndrome or dyslexia or autism.”
Arkansas Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin issued a statement last week claiming that if the states win the lawsuit, “regulations would go back to what they were” before gender dysphoria was added to the law. He said that a ruling declaring Section 504 unconstitutional would only mean the federal government couldn’t revoke funding over a failure to comply with the part of the law protecting gender dysphoria.
But Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law expert and the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, wrote in an email that the lawsuit clearly asks the court to declare the entirety of Section 504 unconstitutional. He called the request “truly stunning.”
The lawsuit is currently on hold. Shortly after President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, the parties in the case agreed to pause litigation while the new administration reevaluates the federal government’s position. Status reports are due to a judge later this month. Some of the AGs involved in the lawsuit, including Georgia’s Carr and West Virginia Republican Attorney General J.B. McCuskey, have said they expect the Trump administration to reverse the Biden rule. That could cause the AGs’ lawsuit to be dropped.
Meanwhile, as public pressure escalates, some AGs are distancing themselves from the suit.
South Carolina Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a statement last week that Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order stating that “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female” resolved his concerns. “Our mission is complete,” Wilson said. Some advocates understood his statement to mean he might withdraw South Carolina from the lawsuit.
However, a spokesperson for his office told Stateline that South Carolina would not be withdrawing from the lawsuit, but would be filing a notice with the court this week to clarify that the state is not asking for Section 504 to be declared unconstitutional.
Utah Republican Attorney General Derek Brown said in a statement that Utah joined the lawsuit before he took office and that he doesn’t think Section 504 will be invalidated because “the Trump administration will soon withdraw the regulation” that added gender dysphoria to the list of disabilities.
The AGs argue that established federal law does not consider gender identity disorders to be disabilities. They say allowing the Biden rule to remain in place would let the government withhold federal funding from schools unless they allow transgender students to compete in sports or use locker rooms that match their gender identity.
Grassroots efforts
Cravins, the Louisiana attorney and mother, sent a letter this week to Louisiana Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill, asking her to drop Louisiana from the lawsuit.
Murrill issued a statement Wednesday expressing support for people with disabilities and saying her office is “actively seeking a resolution with the Trump administration” to withdraw the Biden rule while keeping the law’s previous protections intact.
Cravins said her son depends on Section 504 protections to access specialized therapies, and will rely on those protections even more as he approaches school age. Section 504 will help ensure he receives access to vision-related support, therapy and other accommodations in school.
Cravins believes the AGs that signed onto the lawsuit aren’t being honest about its potential impact to protections for all people with disabilities.
“For them to say one thing and the lawsuit to say another, I can’t imagine it’s anything other than them being disingenuous with their constituents,” she said.
Ryan Renaud, a school board representative for one of the largest public school districts in Alabama, said a concerned parent who also is an attorney contacted him last week, after reading a story about Alabama Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall joining the lawsuit. More calls soon followed.
“We’ve been hearing from dozens of parents in the last couple of days,” Renaud told Stateline. Without Section 504 protections, he said, students could lose access to a wide range of accommodations, from classroom aides to extra time to take tests.
The impacts could extend beyond what most people think of when they think of special education, he said.
“This includes students with ADHD, heart disease, depression, visual impairment, diabetes,” Renaud said. “Accommodations that come with those health concerns also fall under 504 plan protection.
“When a student doesn’t have those accommodations, they become less secure in class and teachers are less able to manage their classrooms.”
He’s also worried that the funding from the U.S. Department of Education that helps pay for those accommodations could vanish if federal law no longer requires them. Trump has vowed to dismantle the agency.
“We spend on average $30 million a year or more on special education, and more than a quarter of that is provided by the federal government,” he said. “If [accommodations] aren’t federally protected and the Department of Education doesn’t have the authority to disburse the funds, we have to assume we’d have to pick up that slack through local or state funding.
“And it’s hard to believe Alabama would cough up tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to supplement these costs.”
Last year, the U.S. Department of Education reported that 1.6 million students with disabilities were served under Section 504 nationwide during the 2020-2021 school year.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.