The Rights Our Disabled Children Have Were Fought For — And We May Have to Fight to Keep Them
Why Parents Need to Understand LRE and Olmstead Together
Parents of children with disabilities hear the phrase “least restrictive environment” all the time.
If your child has an IEP, you have probably sat in meetings where people talk about whether your child can be included in a general education classroom, whether they need pull-out services, whether they need a separate classroom, whether they need a one-to-one aide, whether they can participate with nondisabled peers, and whether the school has done enough to support them before moving them somewhere more restrictive.
That is LRE.
At its core, least restrictive environment means disabled children should not be separated from nondisabled children just because educating them in the general education setting takes more work, more support, more creativity, more staffing, or more money.
That principle matters because for most of American history, disabled children were not meaningfully included. Many were denied school entirely. Many were placed in separate classrooms or separate schools with low expectations and little meaningful access to education. Families were often told, directly or indirectly, that their children belonged somewhere else.
That history is why IDEA includes the least restrictive environment requirement. It is also why the broader disability rights movement fought for Section 504, the ADA, and later Olmstead.
For parents of younger children, Olmstead may sound like an adult-services case. And technically, it is not an IDEA case. It involved two women with disabilities, Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson, who were confined in a Georgia psychiatric institution even though professionals had determined they could live in the community with appropriate supports.
But parents of young children should still care about Olmstead. Because Olmstead is about the same basic principle as LRE: disabled people should not be forced into more restrictive, segregated settings simply because the system has not provided the supports they need to be included.
In school, we call that least restrictive environment. And in adult services, disability rights, and community living, we talk about the integration mandate: the right of disabled people to receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate.
Different laws, but the same fight.
Disabled children should not be pushed out of classrooms because supporting them is inconvenient. Similarly, disabled adults should not be pushed into institutions because community-based supports are inconvenient.
That is why parents of young children need to understand Olmstead now. Your child is not going to be a child forever. The same fight you may be having today over inclusion, communication access, aides, behavior supports, transportation, and whether your child belongs in ordinary community settings does not magically end when your child leaves school.
It becomes the fight over adult services, supported living, supported employment, community access, attendant care, Medicaid-funded supports, transportation, behavioral health services, and whether our children are allowed to build real lives in the community.
This is why the recent DOJ memo matters. It attacks the integration mandate under the ADA and Section 504. In plain English, it questions whether federal disability law actually requires states to avoid unnecessarily segregating disabled people.
For parents who are currently thinking about LRE, this should feel familiar. Because once you understand that LRE is about keeping disabled children from being unnecessarily segregated in school, it becomes easier to understand why Olmstead matters. Olmstead is about keeping disabled people from being unnecessarily segregated in life.
Parents Need to Understand the History Behind This Moment
The rights our children have today were not handed down by school districts, institutions, agencies, or lawmakers because everyone suddenly decided to do the right thing. These rights were fought for by disabled people, parents, families, lawyers, organizers, and communities who refused to accept exclusion as normal.
For most of American history, people with disabilities—as a marginalized population—were pushed out of public life. Children with disabilities were denied school or placed in separate programs with little expectation that they would be meaningfully educated. Adults with disabilities were placed in institutions, nursing facilities, psychiatric hospitals, or other segregated settings. Families were often told, directly or indirectly, that their loved ones belonged somewhere else.
This history is the reason disability law exists.
Section 504, IDEA, the ADA, and Olmstead all come from this history. They exist because disabled people and their families organized, protested, filed lawsuits, showed up at hearings, challenged school districts, challenged states, challenged institutions, and refused to be grateful for whatever the system felt like offering.
That part matters to me personally. Before I was a lawyer, I was a community organizer. I know what it means when families are told to be patient, be reasonable, calm down, trust the process, and wait their turn. Sometimes that comes from a genuine caring place, but very often, it is what people in power say when they want a troublesome crowd to stop making noise.
Disability rights exist because people made noise.
Why These Laws Matter for Our Children
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act said disability discrimination is illegal in programs that receive federal funds.
IDEA said children with disabilities are entitled to a free appropriate public education.
The ADA said disabled people have the right to access public life, including state and local government services.
These laws are not abstract. They are the reason parents can demand evaluations, IEPs, related services, accommodations, behavior supports, communication access, transportation, and meaningful participation in school. They are the reason families can challenge districts when disabled children are excluded, ignored, segregated, or pushed into inappropriate placements.
And again, this is why Olmstead matters. It extends the same civil-rights logic beyond school: disabled people should not be segregated from community life simply because the system has failed to provide the services and supports they need.
Why Project 2025 and the DOJ Memo Matter
This is why I am paying close attention to what is happening now.
Project 2025—and if you haven’t read it, I suggest you do—proposes moving special education funding and enforcement away from the Department of Education, turning most IDEA funding into a “no strings” block grant, and moving disability enforcement toward DOJ. The recent DOJ memo issued on June 18th of this year then attacks the integration mandate under the ADA and Section 504.
Those two things should not be viewed in isolation: Project 2025 lays out a broader plan to limit federal civil rights enforcement, narrow agency authority, return more power to states, and reduce the federal administrative structure that currently enforces many disability protections.
The DOJ memo applies that same legal philosophy to one of the most important disability rights principles we have: the right to receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate. The memo argues that Section 504 and the ADA do not require states to provide services to disabled people in the most integrated setting appropriate.
In plain English, it questions whether federal disability law actually requires states to avoid unnecessary segregation of disabled people.
That is not a small thing. That is the legal principle that helps keep disabled people out of institutions when they can live in the community with supports.
And you should care about this even if your child is still in school. School is the beginning of the disability services pipeline - not the end of it. Today you may be fighting for inclusion in classrooms. Later you may be fighting for supported living, supported employment, Medicaid waiver services, communication access, attendant care, transportation, behavioral health supports, and the right to live in the community instead of whatever setting the state decides is cheapest.
I know this personally because my own son, Aidan, is an autistic adult. The fights parents have in school over inclusion, communication, supports, behavior services, transportation, and whether our children belong in ordinary community settings do not magically end when they leave the school system. They become fights over adult services, supported living, community access, attendant care, Medicaid-funded supports, and whether our children are allowed to build real lives in the community. That is why Olmstead is not some abstract case to me. It is about the future many of us are trying to build for our children.
I also know this from moving from Texas to California. When we came to California, I was shocked that Aidan was eligible for community-based services that he would have had to wait more than twenty years to access in Texas. That was not because his disability changed. It was because the legal structure changed. California has the Lanterman Act and Regional Centers, which create an entitlement to developmental disability services for eligible people. Texas relies much more heavily on capped Medicaid waiver programs with years-long interest lists. Same person. Same needs. Completely different access to services because one state built a system around entitlement, and the other built a system around waiting.
That is why I do not hear phrases like “state flexibility” or “local control” as neutral.
I have lived the difference between states. I know what it means when a disabled person’s access to community life depends on which side of a state line they live on. And I know that when federal protections get weaker, families in states with fewer supports are the ones who pay first.
What “Flexibility” Really Means for Families
One of the things that concerns me most is the language being used to sell these changes. We hear words like “local control,” “flexibility,” “no strings attached,” “less bureaucracy,” and “parent choice.” Those words can sound reasonable—especially to parents who are exhausted by paperwork, meetings, procedural requirements, and systems that already feel impossible to navigate.
But parents need to ask: flexibility for whom?
When schools and states get more flexibility, families do not always get more power. Sometimes they get fewer enforceable protections. Sometimes “local control” means your child’s rights depend even more heavily on your zip code, your district, your state, and your ability to fight.
Without the history, “local control” sounds harmless. With the history, we remember that local control is where many disabled children were excluded from school in the first place. Without the history, “no strings attached” sounds efficient. With the history, we understand that the strings are often the protections.
For instance, in special education, those “strings” are not just paperwork. They are IEPs, evaluations, FAPE, least restrictive environment, parent participation, prior written notice, due process, OCR complaints, federal oversight, data collection, and accountability. They may call it bureaucracy. But for families, it is often the legal structure that keeps disabled children from being pushed out, segregated, warehoused, or ignored.
And yes, everyone hates paperwork. Nobody dreams of spending their evening reading prior written notice unless something has gone very wrong in life. But that paperwork is often evidence. Evidence is how rights can be enforced.
Why Narrowing “Discrimination” Matters
The DOJ memo also fits into a larger legal effort to narrow what “discrimination” means. Instead of recognizing unnecessary segregation as discrimination, the memo moves toward a much narrower idea: discrimination as only arbitrary unequal treatment.
That distinction matters. Disability discrimination has never been only about someone saying, “We are treating you badly because you are disabled.” It is also about systems that exclude, segregate, underfund, institutionalize, and then pretend the result is neutral.
If a state can justify segregation by pointing to budget limitations, staffing shortages, safety concerns, administrative convenience, or lack of available community services, then the right to integration becomes much weaker.
And once that principle is weakened, disabled people and their families are left with fewer tools to challenge systems that push people into more restrictive settings.
This is why attacking the integration mandate matters. It is not just about where disabled people receive services. It is about whether disabled people are treated as full members of the community.
Why Parents Need to Understand Their Power
The danger is not necessarily that IDEA disappears tomorrow. The danger is that the federal floor gets lower, enforcement gets weaker, and everything becomes more state-by-state, district-by-district, family-by-family.
And the burden will fall hardest on the families already carrying the most: parents of children with intellectual disabilities, children with significant behavioral needs, children with medical needs, and children who need aides, AAC, transportation, nursing, mental health support, or intensive related services.
In other words, the children who are expensive to serve. The children who are inconvenient for systems. The children who already get pushed toward “somewhere else.”
That is why parents need to understand this moment. And it is also why parents cannot only understand the law. They have to understand their own power.
Every major disability right we have today came from people refusing to accept exclusion as normal. It came from disabled people and families organizing. It came from parents saying: my child belongs in school. My child belongs in the community. My child is not a burden. You do not get to disappear our children because serving them properly is inconvenient.
This is not just politics. This is about whether disabled children have rights that can actually be enforced, or whether families are left to fight alone, one child at a time.
And if history teaches us anything, it is that parents and disabled people have had to fight for every inch of progress. We should not be surprised that we may have to fight to keep them.
Join us for our upcoming webinar on Tuesday July 28 at 6:30 PM PST. Attorneys Gloria Perez-Stewart and Jennifer T. Campbell will be discussing how to understand special education and the IEP process.