A June 18 Justice Department opinion challenges the ADA's integration mandate; its first test is the federal case over medically fragile children placed in Florida nursing homes.

The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued a June 18 memorandum opinion that challenges the integration mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act — the requirement, repeatedly upheld by courts under the Supreme Court's Olmstead ruling, that states serve people with severe disabilities in the most integrated setting appropriate for their needs. According to FloridaBulldog.org, the opinion was requested four months earlier by Samuel Adkisson, an associate counsel in the White House Counsel's office. No law has changed and Olmstead has not been overturned, but the opinion would give states and federal agencies a powerful new tool for limiting community-based care obligations under the ADA.

The first practical impact is likely to come in the department's 13-year-old enforcement action against Florida over the state's practice of placing medically fragile children in nursing homes rather than providing care in their homes. Florida lost in federal district court in West Palm Beach after a two-week trial in 2023, then lost again in a 2-1 panel decision at the 11th Circuit in Atlanta. The state is now seeking a rare en banc rehearing before the court's 12 judges. Within days of the opinion, Civil Rights Division lawyers asked for and received a 45-day extension to assess it before responding to Florida's petition — a case in which, FloridaBulldog.org reports, the federal government now appears aligned with the state it once sued.

Disability advocates describe the memo as a reversal. Geron Gadd, a senior attorney with the National Health Law Program, called it "a sharp pivot from DOJ's longstanding construction of the ADA and Olmstead" and "harmful to real people and intellectually dishonest." Anne Raish of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law said the government "has gone from a lead protector of disability rights to a threat." If embraced by Justice Department leadership, the opinion also threatens two court rulings that found Florida violated the ADA through unjustified segregation and institutionalization.