1. United States
2. Md.
3. Letter

You need to act now to defend the Olmstead protections that 8.4 million disabled Americans depend on. The Justice Department's June 18 memo, written by Lanora Pettit, effectively reverses 27 years of disability rights law by declaring that federal law does not require states to allow disabled people to live at home. The memo's own author acknowledges it contradicts nearly three decades of court precedent. That's not a legal argument — that's a confession. The 1999 Supreme Court ruling in Olmstead v. L.C. established that forcing disabled people into institutions when they can live at home is discrimination. Now the federal government has switched sides in Texas v. Kennedy, a live court case that could strip those protections entirely. The institutions this country shut down in the 1970s were sites of filth, overcrowding, forced sterilizations, and deaths. Reversing Olmstead doesn't just change policy — it reopens that door. Speak out against this memo publicly. Use your office to demand answers about Stephen Miller's reported role in driving it. And oppose any federal action — in court or in Congress — that dismantles community-based care for disabled people. This is a civil rights crisis, and silence is a choice.