AUCD Network Alumni
Some months feel like a turning point. This one felt like a warning.
As a disabled person, a parent, and someone who has made disability policy my life’s work, I know the disability community is often the first to feel the effects of federal decisions and the last to be consulted. June brought several major developments with consequences for our rights, our children’s education, and our ability to live in the community. But in a crowded news cycle, many people still have not heard about these changes or gotten the clear information they need to act.
What Happened: A Week of Policy Whiplash
The Department of Education announced interagency agreements that would shift more operational responsibility for special education and rehabilitative services to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and expand the Department of Justice’s role in civil rights enforcement. Under the first agreement, day-to-day management of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) would move to HHS, while ED would retain statutory responsibility and IDEA funding authority for now. Under the second, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Office of Student Privacy and Protection would be embedded within the Department of Justice, with ED retaining formal authority over OCR.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon also issued a public letter to parents describing the changes as administrative restructuring that would preserve IDEA protections while changing how federal oversight is carried out
Two days later, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memorandum opinion on Olmstead and the integration mandate concluding that neither Section 504 nor Title II of the ADA imposes a legally enforceable integration mandate on states in the way DOJ and HHS have interpreted for years. The memo does not change the Supreme Court’s ruling in Olmstead v. Lois Curtis, but it signals a substantial shift in how the administration is interpreting and planning to enforce community-integration protections.
Why Be Worried?
For many disabled Americans, these developments are not abstract policy debates. They affect how children get education services, how families access support, and whether disabled people can continue living and working in their communities. I was part of the first generation of students to benefit from IDEA. I had an IEP from kindergarten through graduation. I grew up knowing I had a legal right to learn alongside my peers, not because my family had special resources, but because federal law said I belonged in the classroom. Later, as a parent, I saw those same protections matter in a different way. My children benefited from early intervention, special education, and the legal safeguards IDEA provides. That is why I know IDEA is not just a promise. It is enforceable civil rights law. My family has also relied on home- and community-based services, the supports made possible by Olmstead.
That is why these policy changes feel so serious to me. When the Department of Education changes how IDEA oversight is handled, and when the Department of Justice narrows its interpretation of Olmstead and the integration mandate, the stakes are not theoretical. They affect real people, real families, and the systems many of us depend on every day.
What We Can Do About It (your voice is needed now)
Education:
Senators Kaine and Cassidy agreed on the record during the June 17 HELP Committee Executive Session to pursue a legislative fix blocking the move to HHS, with a vote expected during the committee’s July markup. That gives us both a timeline and a clear opportunity to use our voices to protect special education and rehabilitative services.
We need direct, sustained communication with elected officials at every level. As you contact your Senators and urge them to support efforts to block this move, it is equally important to make clear to all members of Congress, and to those seeking office, that protecting these rights must remain a political priority. They need to hear from:
- parents who fought for their child’s IEP
- students currently receiving special education services
- adults whose lives were shaped by IDEA
- families who rely on early intervention
Lawmakers must understand that IDEA is not an abstract policy. It is a civil rights guarantee that transformed entire generations of Americans. And they need to hear that weakening enforcement is not acceptable.
Olmstead and Community living:
Right now, we can take action to protect community living. Call or email your Senators and Representatives and tell them to defend the Olmstead decision and the right of people with disabilities to live in their communities. Ask them to push back on any effort to expand forced institutionalization and to hold the Department of Justice accountable. We can also follow the disability rights organizations that are monitoring and preparing to challenge these changes in court.
Path Forward
This week was hard, but it is a reminder that progress is not permanent and that rights mean little if we do not defend them. I am not willing to treat this as just another news cycle. I am going to keep speaking up, sharing information, and pushing for accountability, and I hope others will join me.
And as Justin Dart taught us:
“Vote as if your life depends on it — because it does.”
Bio: Rylin Rodgers serves on Microsoft’s Accessibility Team as a Global Disability Policy Director. She strives to impact disability policy in the areas of technology, workforce and fundamental right. Rylin’s work is influenced by her lived experiences with disability. She is dyslexic and has idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and the mother of two young adults with physical disabilities and medical complexity. Her family is ALL IN for disability policy!
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https://www.aucd.org/staff/shoshana-marin
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