Group #9 Disability Rights
• The Role of States in Self-Love and Intimacy for Youth with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
Natalie M. Chin, CUNY School of Law
Following Olmstead v. L.C., people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have gained greater access to community-based services, including housing, mental health support, educational opportunities, and employment support; and have continued to achieve the meaningful community integration envisioned by Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Olmstead. Despite legal advances, there is one area where neither law nor society has advanced in destigmatizing persons with intellectual disabilities; 32 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, persons with intellectual disabilities remain in the shadows of full community integration in matters of engaging in healthy intimate relationships. While healthy relationships and sexuality are critical to these goals, they remain disregarded or stigmatized, largely due to the presumption that persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities are too disabled to engage in intimate or sexual relationships. States’ laws and policies are largely retroactive, focusing on the disproportionately high rates of sexual abuse and exploitation against this population. As a result, reform efforts are limited to those embedded in the criminal system.
This article challenges the reactive approach by states and the federal government to argue that comprehensive sexual education (CSE) is a positive right for intellectually and developmentally disabled young people under Title II of the ADA and the Individuals with Education Act. This argument identifies the right to CSE as a reasonable accommodation under Title II of the ADA and an essential aspect to ensuring a free and appropriate public education to disabled students.
• Force Multiplier: An Intersectional Examination of One Immigrant Woman’s Journey Through Multiple Systems of Oppression
Amelia Wilson, Columbia Law School
The immigrants’ rights movement must assume an intersectional approach to dismantling the co-constitutive systems of oppression that conspire to punish, exclude, and exploit disfavored groups. Racial justice must be at the center of the movement, but so too must we understand the devastating role that gender, disability, and documentation status play in marginalizing immigrants and their communities.
This paper uses one woman’s story, whose journey through the criminal justice system and deportation pipeline is illustrative of many intertwining forms of systemic subjugation. Mbeti Ndonga is not only a Black undocumented immigrant woman living in rural Georgia but also a person suffering from serious mental health disabilities. Mbeti experienced an erosion of safety over time that resulted in her being twice detained in the notorious Irwin County Detention Center, once deported, and ultimately the victim of unconsented-to, harmful gynecological procedures by a doctor who is now at the center of a major federal investigation. A transversal investigation of Mbeti’s life as she interacted with multiple state and federal agencies reveals patterns of subordination that buttress one another and create a perpetual cycle of suffering.
Just as oppression is multi-tentacled, so must be the solution. We must heed the calls of so many indefatigable advocates, organizers, and impacted persons who demand that we abolish immigration detention, provide counsel to immigrants facing deportation, reform and repeal our punitive criminal laws, and defund ICE. While these recommendations are not exhaustive, they will go far in resisting—and hopefully reversing—the status quo.