From the Arkansas Democrat Gazette (registration required), Google/AP:

The federal Department of Justice has filed suit against the state of Arkansas for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, alleging that the state illegally segregates hundreds of people with developmental disabilities.

The lawsuit accused Arkansas of a “systemic failure” that places people with disabilities in large institutions instead of pursuing less restrictive options for their care in community-based settings.

“The state gives individuals with developmental disabilities the draconian choice of receiving services in segregated institutions or receiving no services at all,” the lawsuit reads.

“Arkansas illegally segregates hundreds of individuals in institutions across the state and places hundreds more at risk of needless institutionalization,” said Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, chief of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “We are acting now to remedy discrimination against these individuals.”

Arkansas officials said the state is complying with the ADA, and pledged to fight the federal lawsuit. “We will defend the right of our families to choose where they will have their loved ones served,” said a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services.

The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is calling on President Obama to name a Supreme Court nominee who will uphold the rights of people with disabilities.

From the center’s website:

Despite Congress’s bipartisan passage in 2008 of the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) to restore the law’s broad reach after years of hostile court rulings, judges are still getting the ADA wrong -– still shutting the courthouse door on people with disabilities. We need a leader every bit as strong as Justice Stevens to ensure full enforcement of the ADA and other important disability rights laws. Justice Stevens’ replacement must be committed to the protection of disability rights.

The full text of the center’s action alert is here.

From CBS News:

In a letter released yesterday, the insurance industry’s top lobbyist said the industry will not fight a provision in the new health care law that guarantees coverage to children with pre-existing medical conditions. The Obama administration had promised that the coverage would start later this year.

Earlier press reports, including this one in the New York Times, had said the insurance industry was challenging that portion of the measure and arguing that its language was not precise.

The White House sent a letter to the insurance industry to clarify the bill. “We don’t want to leave any ambiguity,” says Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. “This won’t be up to insurance companies to interpret. Parents can rest assured.”

Related stories from AP/Washington Post, National Public Radio.

Earlier report from CBS: Language in health care law may prevent kids with pre-existing conditions from getting coverage until 2014. The video is here.

From the New York Times:

A parliamentary hold has been placed on the nomination of autism self-advocate Ari Ne’eman to the National Council on Disability amid a growing controversy about his views. President Obama’s seven other nominees to the council were confirmed by the Senate this month.

Ne’eman, 22, has a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome and is the founder of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. He has said that autism is a naturally occurring form of “neurodiversity” that should be embraced and accommodated, not cured. Critics, including the co-founder of the advocacy group Autism Speaks, say Ne’eman’s view fails to represent individuals on the autism spectrum who lack basic communication and self-care skills.

Historically, the kind of genetic research supported by many parents of children with autism, Mr. Ne’eman has said, has been used to create prenatal tests that give parents the ability to detect a fetus affected by a particular condition, like Down syndrome, so that they can choose whether to terminate the pregnancy.

“We just think it makes more sense to orient research to addressing health problems or helping people communicate rather than creating a mouse model of autism or finding a new gene,” Mr. Ne’eman has said.

Earlier posts here.

(Photo from “No Myths” PSA)

By Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson.

Refuting an op-ed in support of the use of the word “retard,” Gerson says what is worst about the current public conversation is “a dismissive attitude toward the struggles of the disabled.”

People who wish to understand the context of the current debate, Gerson says, would do well to study a prominent 20th century American movement that sought to direct human evolution by eliminating the supply of people with developmental and physical disabilities in the population. Called the eugenics movement, it targeted for elimination a number of groups identified as “socially unfit,” including the “feebleminded,” “epileptics,” the “insane,” the “deformed,” and the “deaf.” Forced sterilization of the “unfit” was endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court and did not end in the United States until the 1970s.

An excerpt:

Given this history, the r-word does not seem so innocuous. And defending it does not seem so heroic. [Christopher M.] Fairman can have his cherished f-word, which merely soils and trivializes the sex act. But defending the r-word is not the protection of free expression; it is the defense of bullies.

… There is not an exact correlation between vileness of speech and vileness of character, but there is a rough correlation. Words such as the r-word and the n-word often reveal aggression, contempt and hatred. They are a form of verbal violence. In these cases, what Fairman calls “self-censorship” is really kindness and moral judgment. And what he regards as free expression is just rude, abusive and cruel.

… Yes, government involvement in the censorship of words is dangerous. But what the Special Olympics is proposing –- encouraging people to take a personal pledge against the derogatory use of the r-word –- is not government censorship, it is social stigma. In this case, such stigma is a sign of moral maturity.

I have signed the pledge at www.r-word.org. I hope you do as well.

Related columns by Michael Gerson.

Writing in the Washington Post, Ohio State University professor Christopher M. Fairman opposes what he describes as efforts to censor the use of the word “retard.” An excerpt:

It’s not that I’ve come to praise the word “retard”; I just don’t think we should bury it. If the history of offensive terms in America shows anything, it is that words themselves are not the culprit; the meaning we attach to them is, and such meanings change dramatically over time and across communities.

… If interest groups want to pour resources into cleaning up unintentional insults, more power to them; we surely would benefit from greater kindness to one another. But we must not let “retard” go without a requiem. If the goal is to protect intellectually disabled individuals from put-downs and prejudice, it won’t succeed. New words of insult will replace old ones.

Words are ideas, and we should be reluctant to surrender any of them. Freedom of expression has come at a dear price, and it is not worth abridging, even so we can get along a little better. That’s one F-word we really can’t do without.

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker says Sarah Palin’s failure to reprimand Rush Limbaugh for his repeated use of the “R-word” serves to demonstrate that she has been “using her child as a political tool.” An excerpt:

Might Trig someday read his mother’s abortion thoughts and find them hurtful?

… Celebrities who embrace causes are valuable players in raising awareness and advancing policy. That said, the degree to which one uses another’s circumstances to achieve those ends requires a studious self-awareness that seems lacking in the equation of Trig and his mother.

Perhaps the erstwhile governor still thinks in first-person plural, viewing Trig as part of herself. But he is also a separate individual deserving of privacy, if unable to say the words she needs to hear: “No more, Mama, please.”