The path back to institutionalization can begin with quiet decisions that weaken oversight, services and inclusion. Encircle Families Executive Director Christopher Tiffany reflects on recent policy changes and the safeguards that help people with disabilities live, learn and belong in their communities.
In 1972, television journalist Geraldo Rivera brought cameras inside Willowbrook State School, a New York institution for people with intellectual disabilities. Americans saw overcrowding, neglect and abuse that had been hidden from public view. The broadcast shocked the country and made Willowbrook an enduring warning about what can happen when people with disabilities are removed from their communities and placed out of sight.
More than 50 years later, institutionalization is unlikely to return with a public announcement that we are rebuilding Willowbrook. It can return through quieter decisions that weaken the systems intended to prevent it.
An independent monitor is removed. A civil rights case is abandoned. A protection remains in law but receives no funding. A student is separated from classmates because inclusion requires more effort. Each decision may be described as administrative, legal or financial. Together, they narrow the path to community life.
Federal protections under pressure
In June 2026, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel questioned the legal foundation of the federal government’s longstanding approach to community integration under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The opinion argued that Olmstead v. L.C., the Supreme Court decision recognizing that unjustified institutional isolation can constitute discrimination, did not establish the broader integration mandate that DOJ had enforced for decades.
The opinion did not overturn Olmstead, repeal the ADA or change an act of Congress. But it changed the position of the federal agency charged with enforcing those protections. In July 2026, DOJ announced that it would no longer rely on its longstanding Olmstead guidance when enforcing Title II of the ADA.
On Sept. 23, 2026, that retreat moved beyond legal interpretation and enforcement guidance. In Texas v. Kennedy, a federal district court approved a resolution supported by DOJ and several states that removed specific community integration provisions from HHS’s Section 504 regulations nationwide. Section 504 prohibits disability discrimination in federally funded programs. The order did not repeal that law, overturn Olmstead or change the ADA. But it removed regulatory protections intended to help people receive services in their communities and avoid unnecessary institutionalization.
Florida’s children face the consequences
In a Florida case involving children with complex medical needs, DOJ had helped secure an order requiring the state to improve services that could keep children at home. In March 2026, the Eleventh Circuit largely upheld the finding that Florida had violated the ADA and affirmed that the law can protect children facing a serious risk of institutionalization before they enter an institution.
On Aug. 13, after issuing its new legal opinion, DOJ asked the court to vacate that decision and return the case to the district court. The department said it would no longer defend the part of the decision protecting children at substantial risk of institutionalization. It also indicated that, if the case is returned, it will seek to end or narrow portions of the court order based on that protection.
On Sept. 15, the court directed DOJ and Florida to mediation and said that counsel for children at risk of institutionalization should be invited. According to Disability Rights Florida’s Sept. 17 public update, Florida’s related motion to vacate was dismissed without prejudice, and its rehearing request was stayed pending mediation. That update remains the latest substantive public case update located for this Oct. 6 review. The proceedings show the consequences of DOJ’s reversal, even as their outcome remains uncertain.
An earlier retreat in Maine
In Maine, DOJ sued the state after finding that hundreds of children with behavioral health disabilities were being unnecessarily placed in psychiatric hospitals, residential facilities and juvenile detention because they could not obtain services in their homes and communities. The settlement required community services, family and stakeholder participation, and independent review. Less than a year later, DOJ joined Maine in seeking to remove the independent reviewer, reduce that participation and narrow protections for some children in the juvenile justice system. The court refused. According to the ACLU of Maine, both Maine and DOJ appealed. A coalition of disability rights advocates sought to intervene in the appeal to defend the protections for children.
How school inclusion shapes community life
For more than 20 years, I have worked alongside families pursuing inclusive schools and integrated lives for their children and loved ones. I have also spent those years raising a son with autism and an intellectual disability. As both a parent and a disability advocate, I have learned that inclusive education and community life cannot be separated. The expectations established in childhood help shape the choices available in adulthood.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act begins from a fundamentally different premise than the one that historically drove institutionalization. Congress declared that disability is a natural part of the human experience and does not diminish a person’s right to participate in or contribute to society. IDEA connects education to equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living and economic self-sufficiency.
When students with disabilities learn alongside nondisabled peers, they do more than share a classroom. They build relationships, develop expectations for adult life and become known as members of their communities. When separation becomes the routine response to disability, it can shape expectations in the opposite direction.
The concern is not that every specialized placement leads to an institution or that every student needs the same educational placement. It is that systems become more willing to accept separation in adulthood when separation has been treated as ordinary throughout childhood.
This is why the federal reorganization of special education and civil rights responsibilities warrants close attention. Under agreements signed in June 2026, HHS will provide substantial services supporting special education administration and enforcement, while DOJ will provide substantial services supporting education civil rights work. The Department of Education retains statutory authority and final decision-making responsibility, but important parts of the work are being divided across agencies.
This reorganization comes after a period when federal education civil rights enforcement had already been severely weakened. In March 2025, about half of the Office for Civil Rights staff were removed from active work and seven of its 12 regional offices were closed. Between March and September, OCR received more than 9,000 complaints but opened 635 investigations. About 90% of the complaints it resolved were dismissed. The staffing actions were later rescinded, but for much of 2025 families faced a civil rights enforcement system with far less capacity to investigate complaints and require corrective action.
Only days after the new agency agreements were announced, DOJ issued its opinion rejecting the broader integration mandate. That timing should concern us. Substantial education civil rights work is being assigned to the same department that is retreating from community integration. When federal enforcement is weakened, unnecessary separation can continue without correction.
On Sept. 30, 139 civil rights and education organizations urged Congress to prevent the reassignment of education civil rights enforcement functions. Their concerns underscore the need to examine how families will obtain help and how agencies will remain accountable as responsibilities are divided.
Education, civil rights and community living are not separate chapters in a person’s life. Dividing this work across agencies risks creating gaps in the protections families depend on. What begins as exclusion from a classroom can shape expectations about where a person belongs throughout life.
Arizona’s independent oversight loses funding
After the Hacienda HealthCare abuse scandal, Arizona created the Compliance, Oversight, Monitoring and Investigations Team. Operated by Disability Rights Arizona, the program provides independent monitoring of group homes serving people with developmental disabilities and complex needs. Its work includes determining whether residents received required health and behavioral services, whether staff could meet their needs, whether adaptive equipment was available and whether serious incidents were properly reported.
In 2026, Arizona enacted a budget that removed the program’s $1.2 million annual funding. The monitoring requirement remains in state law, but funding is subject to available appropriations. Arizona Mirror reported in July that COMIT would cease operations at the end of 2026 unless it secured another funding source. No subsequent public confirmation of replacement funding was located for this Oct. 6 review.
Protections on paper, gaps in practice
Group homes are community-based settings, and they should not be equated with large institutions such as Willowbrook. But a community address alone does not guarantee community life, safety or choice. Independent oversight helps ensure that smaller settings do not reproduce the isolation, lack of accountability and power imbalances that made institutions dangerous.
These examples are not identical. They involve different governments, different laws and different populations. What connects them is the steady removal of accountability: federal guidance abandoned, community integration regulations removed, enforcement positions narrowed, independent review challenged and monitoring left unfunded.
Eventually, families are told that a more restrictive placement is the only practical option. By then, the decisions that made it appear necessary may be years behind us.
Preventing institutionalization requires more than condemning the institutions of the past. It requires adequate community services, a stable workforce, meaningful oversight, inclusive educational expectations and civil rights enforcement when governments fail to meet their obligations. Withdrawing those protections does not solve the problems families face. It makes the consequences less visible and leaves individuals and families to carry more of the risk.
Community living continues to have support across political parties. In late September, members of Congress introduced a bipartisan House resolution reaffirming the right of people with disabilities to live and receive services in their communities. A resolution does not restore the protections that have been removed. It does show that preserving community life can be a shared commitment and that the decisions ahead need not follow the same course.
Willowbrook taught the country to look behind institutional walls. The deeper lesson is that we should not wait until those walls are rebuilt or until people are already behind them, to act.
The future we protect for our children
As the father of a young adult with autism and an intellectual disability, I do not want my son’s right to live, learn and belong in his community to depend on whether every safeguard survives the next budget, legal opinion or administrative reorganization. Institutionalization returns when prevention is abandoned, community options are allowed to fail and separation once again becomes an acceptable answer. Every decision that protects inclusion matters. So does every decision that takes one of those protections away.
Sources and Supporting Claims
Explore the court decisions, agency documents and reporting that support this article, with notes explaining what each source establishes. View sources and supporting claims
