People have fought for decades to gain access to education, jobs, and housing for people with differing abilities. Now, the Department of Justice has issued a statement that would undo the progress so many have worked so hard to achieve. If carried out, their vision would lock people with differing abilities out of schools, jobs, and our communities and return them to the institutions we tore down decades ago.
What Happened?
A few weeks ago, the Department of Justice released a legal opinion that should worry every one of us who cares about people with differing abilities. It argues that the landmark Supreme Court decision in Olmstead v. L.C. doesn't actually require states to serve people with disabilities in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs. The DOJ's own memo admits this reading is "out of step" with how courts have understood Olmstead for more than 25 years. That should tell you something.
I'm not a lawyer. I'm John's dad, and I'm his business partner. So let me tell you what integration actually looks like, because I watched it happen.
What Olmstead Did
In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that unnecessarily segregating people with disabilities, keeping them in institutions when they could be safely and appropriately served in the community, is discrimination. It's known as the integration mandate, and it has shaped how this country provides services, education, and housing to people with disabilities for a generation.
The new DOJ opinion doesn't overturn Olmstead. It can't. But it tells federal agencies they no longer have to enforce it that way. That matters. Laws are only as strong as the will to enforce them, and this memo is a signal that the federal government may be stepping back from a fight it has led for 25 years.
John's Story
John went through the Huntington school district, and he was welcomed like all students. He sat in classrooms alongside his peers, participated in after-school programs, and benefited from the education that all students in the district received. He received a first-rate education.
This experience gave John confidence. It gave him a chance to find out what he was capable of, standing next to other kids who were finding out the same thing about themselves.
That mainstreaming is why John is who he is today. He's not an inspirational exception. He's a guy who had the same shot everybody else in his class had, and he took it. He built John's Crazy Socks with me. He's shipped more than 500,000 packages to 94 countries. He's created jobs, real jobs, with real paychecks, for people with differing abilities. None of that happens if John spends his school years somewhere else, learning something less, around no one but people just like him.
And here's the part people forget: it wasn't only John who benefited. Every kid in those classrooms grew up learning alongside someone with Down syndrome. They learned that differing abilities aren't something to whisper about or work around them, they're just part of who's in the room. That's not a nice-to-have. That's the whole point of integration. It doesn't just change outcomes for the person with a disability. It changes what an entire generation believes is normal.
Why This Isn't Abstract
Olmstead is usually discussed in terms of institutions and community-based services for adults, and that fight matters; people's homes and freedom are at stake. But the principle underneath it is the same one that put John in a mainstream classroom instead of somewhere separate: people with disabilities belong in the same rooms as everyone else, with the support they need to succeed there.
Weaken that principle, and you don't just weaken housing policy. You weaken the logic that got John an education, that gets kids with differing abilities into general education classrooms today, that got John and me in front of Congress and the United Nations to make the case for inclusive hiring. Every one of those things rests on the same idea the DOJ just tried to hollow out.
Where I Stand
I'll say it plainly: this memo is wrong, and it's dangerous. Not because I'm a lawyer arguing statutory interpretation, legal scholars are already doing that work, and they're saying the same thing. It's wrong because I've seen what happens when we bet on people instead of separating them out. I've seen it in my own son.
The law hasn't changed yet. Olmstead still stands. The ADA still stands. But laws don't enforce themselves, and this memo is a green light for the federal government to look away. That's why organizations like the National Down Syndrome Society and the CEO Commission for Disability Employment, of which we are members, are watching closely, and why the rest of us can't afford to look away either.
If you believe in inclusion, not as a slogan, but as the thing that actually builds better schools, better workplaces, and better communities, this is a moment to say so. Call your representatives. Support the disability rights organizations doing the legal and legislative work to hold the line. And if you run a business, keep hiring inclusively regardless of what Washington signals this week. Don't wait for a mandate to do the right thing.
John's advice has always been simple: follow your heart, follow your dreams, work hard, show what you can do. He got the chance to do that because he was never set apart. Let's make sure the kids coming up behind him get the same chance.
— Mark X. Cronin
