CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Thursday marked the 24th anniversary of the Olmstead Decision, a Supreme Court ruling that has been described as the disability community’s Brown vs. Board of Education.
The decision itself was issued by then-Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1999. It found that the “unjustified institutionalization” of people with disabilities was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Barry Taylor, vice president of the Civil Rights and litigation teams at Equip for Equality in Chicago, told WBBM that the ruling was “the most important decision ever issued on disability.”
“The Olmstead Decision tells the state that they can’t keep people in institutions, [and] that they have to have the opportunity to live in the community and have the rights and opportunities that all Americans have,” said Taylor. “Its legacy is huge.”
In her opinion, Ginsburg wrote that unnecessarily placing people with disabilities into institutionalized living centers amounted to discrimination. The late justice wrote that living in an institution “severely diminishes the everyday life activities of individuals.”
As Taylor put it, residents who live in institutions often lose personal autonomy.
“It takes away your freedom to make choices,” he said. “Like when you want to get up in the morning, what you want to eat that day, what activities you do that day. Most of us are able to make those decisions by ourselves.”
Illinois has historically relied very much on institutions to house people with disabilities, Taylor said. Following the Olmstead Decision, he said Equip for Equality and several other disability rights advocates wrote to then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in an effort to spark some collaboration toward “meaningful change.”
They received no response, Taylor said.
So, Taylor said the advocates decided to bring class-action lawsuits against the State of Illinois in order to steer the government toward compliance with the Olmstead Act.The results of those cases were three consent decrees, which are still in effect today: Ligas, Williams and Colbert.
“All three cases were really important because they were really getting at where different types of people with disabilities lived in different kinds of settings,” Taylor said. “Together, those three cases encompass thousands and thousands of people … who are desperate for the freedom to live in the community.”
WBBM Newsradio has reached out to the Governor’s Office and the Department of Human Services and is awaiting a response.
Taylor said those three consent decrees — all of which come back to the Olmstead Decision — nearly 20,000 people in Illinois have been moved out of institutions and into their community.
Although Taylor said that there are still many living in Illinois institutions, including thousands who live at state-operated facilities, he added that the Olmstead Decision has been instrumental in driving the progress that’s been made over the decades.
“It’s a challenging legacy to implement sometimes because of a reliance on institutions,” he said. “Slowly but surely, I think we’re finally going to get to that promise: ‘For all people’ — including people with disabilities.”
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