So hi, I'm Catherine Blakemoore
I'm the former Executive Director of Disability Rights California,
which is the agency established under federal law
as California's protection and advocacy system.
Our mandate is to assist people with disabilities
and protect their civil rights through a variety of advocacy efforts.
Um, and I had the really good fortune of working at Disability Rights California
or other similar organizations for about 40 years
and both as a lawyer representing people and protecting their civil rights
and their educational rights and their housing rights,
and then most recently as the Executive Director.
So the ADA to me is really based on the foundations
of other really important statutes
and those include the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act
and both of those laws helped ensure inclusion and end discrimination.
So when I was a very young lawyer in 1977,
I did a lot of work in the area of education
and one of the very first cases I worked on was representing a child, Jeremy
who was in 1st grade and in the summer,
he had been crossing a street with his family
and unfortunately was hit by a car and became quadriplegic as a result of that
and when his mother went to enroll him in school for the next school year,
she was told that because of his disability,
he could not return to his neighborhood school.
and instead would need to go to a segregated special education program
because that's where students with disabilities went
and his parents contacted us and we agreed to take the case
because that discrimination of saying
you couldn't be with your neighborhood peers was just fundamentally wrong
and contrary to the very foundations
of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
so we represented him in he hearing, we went to court.
When we went to court, I think one of the most important things to me,
was numbers of his classmates and their parents came to court with us
and the students, they're 1st and 2nd graders,
um, clearly enjoyed being with Jeremy
but also more importantly, talked to the news media that was there
about how they couldn't understand why Jeremy couldn't attend school with them
and how important it was that their friend be able to go to school
and participate with them just like he had in the years before.
So that case to me, just represented the fist opportunity
to really challenge a discriminatory practice and ensure that Jeremy
could attend his neighborhood school
and be included with his friends.
So I think the first "aha" moment of the ADA was our ability
to use the ADA and to discuss the United States Supreme Court decision
called the "Olmstead Case" which said that people with disabilities
could not be unnecessarily segregated in institutions
and one of the most powerful ways we use the ADA and that case holding
was to challenge the budget cuts
that were proposed when California was deep in an economic recession in 2008
and 2009. The state made the decision that what it was going to do is
significantly reduce community-based supports like the
in-home supportive services program
Umm and our lawyers in Disability Rights California
decided that that violated the ADA and would result in people needing to move
into institutions, contrary to the Olmstead Decision
So twice we went into federal court. Twice we were successful
with the court holding that the ADA prohibited the state from making decisions
that would result in the unnecessary institutionalization of people.
So the ADA is an extraordinarily powerful tool to
protect people's civil rights and one that we need to continue to use today.
So I think what we've learned um in the last few months is that
there is always room for us to continue to use the ADA as a tool to push further
and the pandemic really reminds us of the high risk
that people with disabilities, particularly those living in segregated
and isolated settings like nursing homes face.
COVID, which disproportionately impacted nursing home residents
and it's in part because of the congregate setting that they live in
and the vulnerability of people with disabilities to this particular disease.
And so as we think about reopening California and moving forward,
we have to really remember the importance of the ADA in saying
that people need to live in the community.
They need to be included.
We have to be mindful of how do we accommodate the needs of people with
disabilities as part of our reopening.
How do we redesign service systems so that we no longer think of nursing homes as
a primary place where people with disabilities or seniors should be living
How do we ensure that people with disabilities, when they are participating
in activities of the day aren't placed in isolated day kinds of programs
but instead given opportunities to interact in the larger community
So lots of work in that area to be done.
I think the other part that's important is to use this moment to
engage in intersectional civil rights advocacy.
There's lots of energy now to looking at issues of discrimination affecting
black and brown people who are also more disproportionately impacted
by the pandemic and to use this as an opportunity to come together as
a larger civil rights community to advance inclusion, integration,
nondiscrimination for all people including those with disabilities.