A Statement by Dr. Victor Santiago Pineda, Executive Director, Center for Independent Living.
On June 18, 2026 — the eve of America’s 250th birthday — the Department of Justice released a legal opinion that guts 27 years of disability civil rights protection. It rewrites the 1999 Olmstead Supreme Court ruling, which held that locking disabled people in institutions against their will is discrimination. The new standard: as long as a state can offer any reason — budget constraints, capacity limits, staffing shortages — it may institutionalize a disabled person without federal consequence. This is a permission slip for segregation, issued from Washington on the eve of our nation’s anniversary of freedom.
I write from Berkeley, California, where disabled people built this movement from scratch. Ed Roberts rolled through these streets in his wheelchair and proved that disabled people belong in the community, not in institutions. The 504 Sit-In happened nearby in the Federal Building of San Francisco — 28 days of occupation until the federal government signed our first civil rights protections. That fight was not fought so an administration could erase it with a legal memo. This center has stood since 1972 on one principle: disabled people are the experts on our own lives, and no government gets to decide otherwise.
The numbers are simple. Community care costs $36,000 a year per person. A nursing facility costs $111,325. Independent Living Centers moved 5,634 people out of institutions in 2023, saving Medicaid an estimated $202 million. Every dollar invested in home-based support saves 74 cents in institutional costs and reduces nursing home populations by 47 people. Institutionalization is not cheaper — it is more expensive and more profitable for the corporations that run these facilities. This opinion, arriving alongside $1 trillion in proposed Medicaid cuts, is not fiscal responsibility. It is a transfer of public money from freedom to confinement.
“Liberty means the right to leave an institution, live in your community, and raise your children. That is not a handout. That is the American promise.”
We will fight this in federal courts, where individual claims remain viable. We will fight it in the California Legislature, which must codify these protections now, independent of Washington.
We will fight it in Congress, where the integration mandate must be written into law beyond any administration’s reach to rewrite.
And we will fight it in the streets, where this movement was born and where it has always won. CIL turns 55 in March. The 504 Sit-In turns 50 in April. America turns 250 in a few days. None of those anniversaries mean anything if we allow freedom to disappear in the fine print of a legal memo. We will not go quietly. We never have.
Dr. Victor Santiago Pineda
Executive Director
Center for Independent Living
