WASHINGTON, DC-- The National Governor's Association has signed onto a lawsuit that will strip the rights of people with disabilities to live in the most integrated setting, saying that state government knows better than people themselves, where and how they should live their lives.

ADAPT is meeting with leaders of the NGA today, at 9:30AM, at the Hall of the States, 444 N. Capitol Street. N.W. to demand that they withdraw their support of the lawsuit, promote MiCASSA, federal legislation that will give people with disabilities a REAL choice in long term services and support.

With its decision to hear a Georgia lawsuit known as L.C. & E.W. v Olmstead on April 21st. the Supreme Court will consider putting back in place what former President George Bush called "the shameful wall of exclusion" separating people with disabilities from other Americans, leaders of national disability rights group ADAPT stated today. ADAPT blames governors for their support of Georgia's petition. In a friend of the court brief, the governors contend that the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not require community placement if appropriate care can also be provided in an institution.

"It's hard to believe that we're entering the next millennium and we still have governors deciding where people with disabilities live," stated ADAPT national organizer Mike Auberger, "Governors don't decide for African Americans, they don't decide for Hispanic, women, or any other minority yet they insist on eroding away our civil rights by signing onto a lawsuit like Olmstead." ADAPT has mounted a campaign to protect the ADA and the fundamental right of people with disabilities to live in the community, dubbed "Don't Tread on the ADA". While the Georgia lawsuit involves people with mental disabilities, ADAPT points out that the Supreme Court decision will have a far reaching impact on the lives of all people with disabilities.

"This will be the defining moment for the ADA," explains Philadelphia attorney Steve Gold. "If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Georgia, the ADA will become a mere shell of what it is intended to be, stripping away its major civil rights provision--integration."

In 1995, the Supreme Court declined to hear Gold's similar Pennsylvania lawsuit, known as Helen L v. DiDario on appeal, letting the lower court's decision stand and freeing a Pennsylvania woman from unnecessary institutionalization. Both Georgia's lawsuit and the Helen L. ruling are based on the ADA's "integration" mandate, which says, "a public entity must administer services, programs, and activities in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of qualified individuals with a disabilities." Authorized in 1990, the ADA is the most sweeping civil rights legislation protecting people with disabilities. Upon signing the law at a packed White House lawn ceremony, President Bush declared, "And now I sign legislation which takes a sledgehammer to another wall, one which has, for too many generations, separated Americans with disabilities from the freedom they could glimpse, but not grasp."

Georgia's appeal to the Supreme Court has outraged ADAPT and the entire disability community. All people want the choice to live in the community, and Georgia's lawsuit challenges this, stating "the fundamental issue of whether Congress intended for institutional care to constitute discrimination...can and should be decided first.". ADAPT recognizes that being forced into an institution constitutes discrimination, and does not want to see this important civil right stripped from the ADA.

Integration
NOT Segregation.