CW: Institutionalization
Sue Root remembers the day her daughter Amy was hit by a car while riding her scooter. At eight years old, Amy suffered catastrophic injuries. Doctors explained that Amy might benefit from placement in a long-term care facility, but Root quickly decided that was not an option.
For more than a decade, she has fought to keep that promise. Today, however, families like the Roots fear the federal government is trying to force disabled people into institutional settings.
This is personal to me. I have cerebral palsy. For the past six years, I have lived in my own apartment. Being independent is about more than having a roof over my head. It means having the ability to make decisions about my own life and maintain control over it.
Think about the choices all of us make every day. What do you want for dinner? What time do you want to get up? What are you going to do today? Most people never stop to think about those decisions because they seem ordinary, but those choices are freedom.
If I lived in a nursing home or another institutional setting, many of those choices would no longer be mine to make. Dinner might be whatever is on the menu. Staff could dictate what my schedule looked like. Decisions about when I wake up, eat, or go to bed could be made by someone else. Much of the independence I have worked hard to build could disappear. That is why this issue is so concerning.
The Trump administration’s efforts to address homelessness have evolved into a broader retreat from enforcement of Olmstead v. L.C., the landmark Supreme Court decision that established that unnecessary institutionalization of disabled people constitutes discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
To many Americans, Olmstead may sound like an obscure legal case. To disabled people, it represents something far more personal. The decision recognized a simple but powerful idea: disabled people should not be forced into institutions when they can live in their communities with appropriate support.
For decades, that belief helped shape disability rights policy across the country. It strengthened community-based services that allow millions of people to remain in their homes.
Now advocates fear those protections are being weakened. The consequences are not theoretical. People should be able to receive care in their communities. Without the home and community-based services, families can find themselves facing impossible choices.
What troubles me most is that conversations about disability are often framed around systems, budgets, and policies while overlooking the people whose lives are directly affected. Disabled people are not burdens to be managed. We are people with goals, relationships, preferences, and dreams. We want the same things everyone else wants: a place to call home, meaningful connections, and the freedom to make decisions about our own lives.
That is why this decision matters. At its core, this is about who gets to decide where disabled people live and how they live.
For people like Amy, and for millions of other disabled Americans, that question is about far more than public policy. It is about freedom, dignity, and the right to belong in our communities. Those values have been at the heart of the disability rights movement for decades, and they should never be negotiable.
Source:
Hixenbaugh, Mike, and Colleen Long. “How Trump’s Homelessness Crackdown Became a Sweeping Retreat from Disability Rights.” NBC News, 2 Oct. 2026, www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-homelessness-crackdown-retreat-disability-rights-olmstead-rcna600545.