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When a dog doesn’t want to take a pill, you coat it in peanut butter. The rube wants the peanut butter and—if you’re lucky—swallows the pill without even realizing it. A recent lawsuit by seventeen states against longstanding protections for disabled Americans uses culture war as its peanut butter and hopes no one will notice the poison pill tucked inside.

The states challenge Biden-era Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rules purporting to interpret the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to cover gender dysphoria—an illegitimate legal innovation. However, the lawsuit uses that controversy as cover to also target the rules’ formalization of longstanding interpretations of the ADA’s key provisions, ones reiterated by the first Trump administration.

In Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s September press release announcing the lawsuit, captioned Texas v. Becerra, you’ll find culture-war red meat. The states boast that they are fighting a federal attempt to “force unscientific, unfounded gender ideology onto the public” using disability-rights laws. It’s true that toward the end of the Biden administration, HHS tried to redefine “disability” to include “gender dysphoria.” But that effort is already doomed. The very day President Trump was inaugurated, he issued a sweeping executive order rooting out “gender ideology” from federal programs. Besides, as the lawsuit points out, the ADA plainly states that it does not cover “transvestism, transsexualism . . . [and] gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other sexual behavior disorders.” The states are going to win on this question, and the Trump administration does not seem interested in opposing them.

But the states do not deserve the massive windfall the rest of their lawsuit seeks. The press release fails to mention that the states also want to do away with vital protections for disabled Americans, on a wide variety of statutory and constitutional grounds. The states contend that they should not have to serve people with disabilities in “the most integrated setting”—in-home or in the community—rather than in institutions. The states complain that they should be able to threaten their disabled citizens with a “serious risk of institutionalization,” even when institutionalization would be unnecessary and illegal. The states want disabled Americans to wait until they’re forced into institutions before they can claim their right to live freely in their families, homes, and towns. And—just for good measure—the states argue that prohibiting disability discrimination in federally funded programs is unconstitutional.

It’s no wonder those parts of the lawsuit didn’t make the press release. Indeed, once they became a matter of public awareness last month, they sparked outrage from disability advocates, politicians, and members of the public—especially those concerned about the lawsuit’s attack on the right to an integrated education provided by Section 504. In response, state attorneys general have tried to claim the lawsuit targets only the gender-dysphoria rule. But their complaint itself spends twenty paragraphs arguing—as Count 3 reads—“Section 504 is Unconstitutional.” Even in a subsequent joint filing where the AGs had the chance to clarify this claim, they made a similarly broad argument, claiming that Section 504 is unconstitutional for any entity not directly funded by the Rehabilitation Act. This argument would strip disability non-discrimination protections from the entire medical system, removing even the legal protections the Reagan Administration used to protect disabled newborns in the 1980s.

The states’ lawsuit is more than just a major threat to the independence of Americans with disabilities. It also defies settled understandings of the law. In 1999, the Supreme Court upheld limits on unnecessary institutionalization in the landmark case Olmstead v. L.C. It noted that Congress enacted the ADA out of concern that “society has tended to isolate and segregate individuals with disabilities.” Federal disability-rights laws reject the notion that people with disabilities “are incapable or unworthy of participating in community life.” They also reflect awareness that “confinement in an institution severely diminishes the everyday life activities of individuals, including family relations, social contacts, work options, economic independence, educational advancement, and cultural enrichment.” Olmstead thus held that states cannot force disabled people to “relinquish participation in community life” in order to receive the medical services they need.

The rules targeted by the states’ lawsuit say people with disabilities can sue to defend their liberty before being actually institutionalized. As the first Trump administration reaffirmed in a 2020 statement, people “need not wait until the harm of institutionalization or segregation occurs” before acting to protect their freedom. People need not wait to try to recover their independence after the fact if a state’s “failure to provide community services or its cut to such services will likely cause a decline in health, safety, or welfare that would lead to the individual’s eventual placement in an institution.”

Most federal courts agree. In a 2003 decision, the Tenth Circuit held that protections for disabled Americans “would be meaningless” if people “were required to segregate themselves by entering an institution before they could challenge” something that “threatens to force them into segregated isolation.” The plaintiffs in that case presented evidence that not every American with a disability would agree to go into a nursing home even if a state made it their only option: “some . . . would just choose to stay at home and die a premature death. Others will wait until their health has deteriorated and then there will be a hospital admission.” Besides, as the Seventh Circuit observed in a 2016 case, not every state has enough nursing-home beds available—meaning that even if some people “had to be institutionalized, it is quite possible that they could not be.”

The states’ lawsuit considers rules against institutionalization to be too burdensome. They complain about the cost of providing in-home and community services, saying the current rules stop them “from innovating and improving their service delivery systems,” and they claim those rules keep them from implementing their “political judgments.” The money concerns are half-baked. The Tenth Circuit’s decision rightly observed that if funding questions alone are enough to justify segregating disabled people in warehouses, “the ADA’s integration mandate would be hollow indeed.” Besides, institutionalization costs much more than community care—rather than cutting costs, pushing people into nursing homes just turns upfront costs into heftier back-end bills.

As for state concerns about their policy options, there’s nothing “innovative” about reviving the pre-ADA days of widespread institutionalization, and political judgments should not trump longstanding legal protections for disabled Americans’ independence. In taking a position like that of the states, the Fifth Circuit recently held that “federal courts must tread lightly when evaluating a claim of ‘unjustified isolation’” of disabled people. On the contrary: Congress passed the ADA precisely so the federal government would be vigilant against segregation. The states may fret about what they call “broad and nebulous” anti-institutionalization requirements, but that is no reason to leave disabled Americans terrified as to whether they’ll be free to live in their own homes.

The Trump administration should settle the states’ lawsuit, giving them the win on gender dysphoria while maintaining vital federal protections for disability rights.

The woman at the center of Olmstead was named Lois Curtis. She had an intellectual disability and mental illness. When she first met a Legal Aid attorney, she was living in a state institution. Ms. Curtis raised the questions many disabled Americans hope never to ask: “Would you please get me out of here? When am I getting out of here?” After winning her legal case, Ms. Curtis moved into a house and received a community caregiver. She painted and drew animals, flowers, and celebrities. But her most personal artistic subject was herself—she painted self-portraits because she had no photographs from her time in the state hospital. She said, “I’m glad to be free.”

Seventeen state attorneys general should be reminded that all Americans appreciate their freedom.