April 2026 - Vol. 23, Issue 2

Nine states are pursuing a lawsuit that argues a 2024 update to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is unconstitutional. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was first signed into law by President Nixon and provided the first legal definition of disability: “physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major activities of life.”

Section 504 was first enforced in 1977 and has undergone a number of changes over the years. This update, instituted by the Biden administration, states that state and city governments and any other organizations or institutions that receive funding from HHS “must serve people with disabilities in the most integrated settings appropriate,” according to Disability Scoop.

In an attempt to rule Section 504 unconstitutional and remove the mandate of serving people in their own communities, this case Texas v. Kennedy would reinstate a legal ground for the very unsightly beggar ordinances, or “ugly laws,” that for over a century fined or imprisoned people with visible disabilities when they appeared in public--and regulated who could be seen and exist in their communities.

The 2024 update to Section 504 critically mandates that people with disabilities should receive accessibility services in their chosen communities rather than in institutions. This “integration mandate” prevents unnecessary institutionalization and penalizes any organization or entity that puts disabled Americans at undue risk of institutionalization by removing their HHS funding.

The lawsuit Texas v. Kennedy was initially filed on July 25, 2024 by 17 states about the mention of gender dysphoria in this Section 504 update. In 2024, Biden classified gender dysphoria, or the physical and psychological stress a person can experience when their gender expression does not match their gender identity.

These 17 states claimed that Biden could not “rewrite statutory definitions and classify ‘gender dysphoria’ as a disability” and that Section 504 should be eliminated because it “forces states to accommodate students with disabilities without legal justification.”

On February 19, 2025, the 17 states released a status arguing that they were suspending their lawsuit because of Trump’s executive order mandating that federal agencies “not promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology.” Under this guidance, HHS is working to remove any indication that gender dysphoria is a form of disability and as a result eight of the initial 17 states dropped out of the lawsuit.

Now, Texas, Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana and South Dakota are changing the focus of the lawsuit arguing that this update “exceeds the limited scope of Section 504.” According to an amended complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for Northern Texas late last month, “neither statute empowers HHS to mandate community-based care or to regard as discriminatory care that involves the mere prospect of institutional care.”

The new complaint is asking the court to declare that the entire Section 504 rule is unconstitutional, stop HHS from enforcing the Section 504 rule, and stop HHS from telling states that they cannot take steps that place disabled people at risk of institutionalization.

As the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund cautions, “if the states are successful in their challenge, it may be harder for disabled people to enforce their right to live and participate in the community. As a result, more people with disabilities may be forced into institutions when they can and want to live in the community instead.”

Many disability rights organizations and coalitions have sounded the alarm about this development. On February 4th, the National Down Syndrome Society explained “the updated lawsuit threatens the ability of people with disabilities to live, work, and thrive in their communities, and may put others at risk of unnecessary institutionalization."

Further, Alison Barkoff, a disability rights lawyer and the former head of the Administration for Community Living told Stat News that “the right to live and participate in the community is one of the most fundamental rights under disability law. It’s a hard-fought right that people with disabilities have been using since the Olmstead decision in 1999, and any efforts to weaken the integration mandate seriously concern me,” she said.

Barkoff is referring to the 1999 US Supreme Court decision Olmstead v. L.C. which ruled unjust segregation of people with disabilities in institutions a form of segregation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The case was brought by two Georgia women, Lois Crutis and Elaine Wilson who were confined to a state psychiatric hospital despite being cleared for community placement. The ruling cemented the requirement that states provide community-based services for people with disabilities.

The landmark decision in Olmstead v. L.C. also dismantled any legal philosophy behind unsightly beggar ordinances that remained on the legal code from the mid 19th century through the 1970s. Called “ugly laws” by disability historians, these codes allowed cities to fine or incarcerate people with visible disabilities from appearing in public spaces.

This new lawsuit Texas v. Kennedy now threatens not only Section 504 and the decision that came out of Olmstead v. L.C. but also legal standing for “ugly laws” that prohibited disabled people from appearing and living in public spaces. While originally called “unsightly beggar ordinances,” they were retroactively renamed ugly laws by disability scholars Marcia Pearce Burgdorf and Robert Burghdorf, Jr. to highlight how they policed beautiful and bodily standards in public spaces.

From 1867 to 1974, the United States targeted both poor people and disabled people, using the legal code to keep them out of public spaces. As one San Francisco ordinance from 1867 read:

“Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, or an improper person to be allowed in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares, or public places in the City of County of San Francisco, shall not therein or thereon expose himself or herself to public view.”

As Susan M. Schweik wrote in The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (2009), “what the ordinance embodied was disability oppression deployed and embedded, ideologically and structurally, in classed, capitalist (and also gendered and racialized social relations. Here ‘disability history’ and ‘poor people’s history’ profoundly intertwine. Ugly law was begging law, although contemporary American disability activism did not know this. Unsightliness was a status offense, illegal only for people without means.”

Nowhere is this parallel to President Trump’s legal assault on the disabled community than in his July 2025 Executive Order that established a policy of “encouraging civil commitment of individuals with mental illness who pose risks to themselves or the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves in appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time.” This Order encourages that Federal and State judicial systems terminate the need for consent when a person is committed, actualizing the goal of this lawsuit to not only remove disabled people from public spaces but mandate their forced institutionalization.

This Order also allowed federal and local judicial systems to forcibly institutionalize people who are homeless as part of “fighting the vagrancy on America’s streets.” Just like the original “ugly laws,” Trump’s campaign against disability rights centers on restoring public order by regulating who is able to occupy and move through public spaces. And this isn’t just limited to legal attacks on disabled or poor people.

As I wrote last year, Montana’s indecent exposure bill HB 446 that was signed into law and effective July 1, 2025 criminalizes trans people existing in public spaces. The bill restricts trans people’s access to restrooms, sleeping areas, and changing rooms in all public buildings, arguing that if a trans man took off his shirt before going on a run or a trans woman took off hers in a changing room, they would be “exposing themselves.”

Even a lawsuit originally set on challenging the classification of gender dysphoria as a disability has revealed that it was all about regulating who is able to access and exist in their communities. It’s choosing to exert this control over public access based on where disabled people receive vital lifesaving services, creating another pathway to forcible institutionalization that disabled Americans’ have fought to resist for decades.