Disability leaders are sounding the alarm as the administration ships special ed off to HHS and walks away from Olmstead, including a case right here in Florida.
This week, some of the most respected leaders in the disability community said out loud what a lot of us have been feeling for months: this administration is taking apart the federal promises disabled people fought for, piece by piece, and calling it efficiency.
On Monday, Sen. Patty Murray pulled together former Education Department officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations, along with advocates and educators, for a press conference. The topic was the Trump administration's plan to move special education programs out of the Department of Education and over to the Department of Health and Human Services, and to hand civil rights enforcement for students to the Department of Justice.
That includes the office that runs IDEA, the law that guarantees kids with disabilities a free public education. Murray called the transfers "outrageous" and "completely unacceptable."
Katy Neas, CEO of The Arc of the United States, said the plan "would split apart the offices responsible for making disability rights real in schools, leaving families chasing answers across the federal government instead of getting accountability from one education agency."
Catherine Lhamon, who ran the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights under Obama and Biden, said the new agreement with DOJ "is what someone would create if the person were designing a system to fail." She warned it means even longer federal silence on the kinds of cases families deal with every day, like kids being restrained or secluded at school.
And Stephanie Smith Lee of the National Down Syndrome Congress, who ran the Office of Special Education Programs under George W. Bush, put it in seven words I can't stop thinking about: "Students with disabilities are learners, not patients."
That's the whole thing right there. When you move special education into a health agency, you're telling the country that disabled kids are a medical problem to be managed, not students to be taught. We've spent fifty years fighting that idea. The Education Department's spokesperson says these agreements "strengthen protections for students." I'd ask her to explain that to a parent who now has to figure out which of three federal agencies is supposed to answer their call.
It's not just schools. A new report from the Congressional Research Service, dated Oct. 26, lays out how far the Justice Department has backed away from Olmstead, the 1999 Supreme Court decision that says disabled people have the right to live in the community instead of being locked away in institutions. In June, DOJ issued a legal opinion saying there is no "integration mandate." In July it declared its own Olmstead guidance "not enforceable." Since then it has walked away from case after case.
One of those cases is ours. In United States v. Florida, DOJ spent years fighting for about 140 Florida children with complex medical needs stuck in nursing facilities, and more than 1,800 more at risk of ending up there. The appeals court largely upheld the win in March. Now DOJ has asked the court to withdraw that decision and says it no longer wants to enforce it. Those are Florida kids. Our neighbors' kids. And the federal government just stopped fighting for them.
The Supreme Court ruling still stands, and families can still sue on their own. But CRS is honest about what that means: these cases take years, cost a fortune, and private families don't have the resources DOJ has. Telling a mom with a medically fragile child that she's free to hire her own lawyers isn't a right. It's a door slammed shut.
Even the data is on the chopping block. The Consortium for Constituents with Disabilities, joined this week by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, is pushing back on CDC changes to the National Health Interview Survey that could drop questions used to count people with hearing, communication and cognitive disabilities. If they stop counting us, it gets a lot easier to pretend we don't need anything.
So here's what I'm asking. Call your senators and tell them special education stays in the Department of Education. Ask your representative to support H.Res. 1586, which reaffirms Olmstead. And if you're in Florida, pay attention to what happens to those 1,800 kids. Nobody else in Washington is going to.
We are learners. We are workers. We are neighbors. We are not patients to be filed away.
Real voices. Real impact. Real change.
Mr. Wheels
Sources:
States Newsroom (via Europe Says), Oct. 26, 2026: https://www.europesays.com/unitedstates/69096/
Direct Support News, Oct. 26, 2026 (CRS Olmstead report): https://directsupportnews.com/policy/olmstead-crs-maps-doj-exits-in-florida-texas-nc-cases
Congressional Research Service, LSB11494: https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/LSB11494.html
ASHA, Oct. 27, 2026: https://www.asha.org/news/2026/asha-opposes-changes-to-disability-relevant-questions-in-the-national-health-interview-survey/