1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

The Justice Department does not have the authority to rewrite civil rights law, and you need to say so publicly and act to stop it. The DOJ's new Office of Legal Counsel memo, authored by Lanora Pettit, guts the integration mandate that has governed disability rights for over 25 years — without a single vote in Congress. The memo itself admits this reading is "out of step with the common understanding" of Olmstead v. L.C. That's not a legal interpretation. That's a policy coup. Olmstead was decided in 1999 because Georgia was warehousing people with disabilities in institutions instead of providing community-based care. The Supreme Court said that was illegal. Now the DOJ is arguing states only need "justification" to institutionalize people, and that what counts as justification is an "open question." There is no justification for institutionalizing people who don't have a strong need for institutional care. That opens the door to stripping services from the 8.4 million Americans currently receiving home- and community-based care through Medicaid — especially as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act slashes Medicaid funding. Institutionalization costs more, produces worse health outcomes, and exposes people to well-documented patterns of abuse and neglect. The housing crisis shows the same pattern: nearly half of unhoused people have a disability, and gutting community-based care will push more people onto the street. People with disabilities are roughly a quarter of the electorate — the largest minority group in the country — and they are watching. Only Congress can change the law. Demand the DOJ withdraw this memo and make clear you will not allow executive branch memos to override decades of settled civil rights protections.