Fear not — Section 504 is still the law.
That’s the message disability rights attorneys and advocates are stressing after U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix struck community-integration provisions from a Biden-era rule implementing a landmark civil rights law.
Enacted as part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504 was the first federal civil rights protection for Disabled people. It bars disability discrimination by programs that receive federal funding, and it later served as the blueprint for the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Hendrix, a Trump appointee, ruled at the request of five states and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The decision leaves the law intact, but it signals that the federal government no longer plans to defend one of the law’s core protections.
“The law still exists,” Eve Hill, a partner at the law firm Brown, Goldstein & Levy who works with the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), told DJA. “Section 504 still exists. The community integration mandate still exists. What doesn’t exist anymore is the U.S. Department of Justice’s and Department of Health and Human Services’ willingness to enforce the community integration mandate.”
The case centered on the rulemaking process, through which federal agencies determine how to implement laws passed by Congress. Hendrix’s ruling closes the case.
Section 504, the ADA, and the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead decision are the three key legal pillars keeping Disabled people in their communities rather than warehoused in institutions.
The case, Texas v. Kennedy, was filed in 2024 in an attempt to remove protections for people with gender dysphoria. What began as a case with 17 states dwindled to five: Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, and Louisiana. The ruling follows a concerning June Department of Justice memo regarding Olmstead and a systematic slashing of disability legal funding since Trump retook the White House.
The decision has caused widespread confusion about the status of Section 504 and disability rights protections writ large.
“The judge did not find the regulation to be illegal, or unconstitutional, or invalid. He just did what the parties in the suit asked him to do and essentially struck out some language regarding the community integration mandate for people with disabilities,” Hill said.
Advocacy groups such as AAPD were quick to denounce the ruling.
“The judge’s decision to eliminate these requirements is a rollback of the right to community integration, but it is not a complete rollback of disability rights,” Maria Town, the organization’s president, said in a statement. “Every disabled person deserves to receive care in the most integrated setting so that they maintain autonomy, agency, and self-direction… Generations of disability activists have fought for community integration, and that fight continues to this day. AAPD will remain on the frontlines of the movement for community living.”
A joint statement from multiple disability and civil rights organizations, including the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union, struck a similar tone, ending defiantly: “We will not go back.”
Caitlyn Clibbon, litigation director for Disability Rights Florida, told DJA she expects the decision to have further ramifications.
“I think this is the one piece of a systematic attack on the rights of people with disabilities. I think that we can expect more of the same,” Clibbon said. “The guidance that people rely on when they’re trying to make sure they’re following the law is not going to talk about integration, and it’s not going to talk about providing services in the least restrictive setting.”
Clibbon said the ruling also creates a challenge for lawyers working to improve and protect disability rights.
“It’s one less tool that lawyers have in their toolbox, one less document that they can cite, one less citation that they can put in their argument,” she said.
Hill echoed that concern: “The government and the people who oppose civil rights are getting together and bringing cases to try and undermine the law, specifically in courts in Texas and in other courts that they know will just go along with them.”
Her advice?
“Make a stink when people try to put you in an institution. Call your lawyer, talk to your protection and advocacy organization, get help.”
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