2026-06-18T18:21:54-0400 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
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2026年6月18日 / 美国东部时间下午6:21 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
美国司法部周四发布了一份新的法律意见，民权专家称这对接受州政府资助服务的精神、身体和智力残疾人而言是一次重大打击。
该法律意见由司法部法律顾问办公室出具，称法律实际上并未要求各州通过提供社区或家庭照护服务，将智障患者与其他同龄人融合安置。专家表示，这一结论与长期以来的法律判例相悖，或将导致更多残疾人被送入收容机构。
这份由首席副助理司法部长拉诺拉·佩蒂特起草、已发布在司法部官网的法律意见，重新解读了长期以来作为美国残疾权益法律基石的最高法院判例。
1999年的奥姆斯特德诉L.C.案判决指出，残疾人有权在社区而非收容机构中接受服务。
“奥姆斯特德判决本身之所以强调社区融合至关重要，是为了让孩子能够融入家庭、重返校园，让人们能够参与社区生活，”曾负责监督奥姆斯特德案民权执法工作的前司法部律师艾莉森·巴科夫说道，她目前是乔治华盛顿大学米尔肯研究所公共卫生学院的教授。“而这次对奥姆斯特德案的重新解读，正是在动摇这项核心原则。”
奥姆斯特德案的原告是两名患有精神和智力障碍的女性，她们因无法获得在家独立生活所需的支持服务，多次被送入佐治亚州的收容机构。
最高法院最终裁定，该州违反了《美国残疾人法案》中规定的民权。
残疾权益群体大多将这一判决与1954年著名的布朗诉教育委员会案相提并论，后者裁定基于种族将儿童分隔在不同公立学校的做法违宪。
司法部在周四的意见中提出，司法部对法律的执行已经超出了最高法院的本意。
“过去二十年来，司法部民权司一直依靠其融合义务和奥姆斯特德案向各州施压，迫使它们将患者从精神卫生机构中释放，”意见中写道。“通过威胁提起或直接提起联邦执法诉讼，民权司已在近十二个州成功促成了同意令、整改命令或庭外协议，要求相关方达到司法部的去收容化标准。”
该意见补充称，最高法院的奥姆斯特德判决实际上并未规定任何融合义务。相反，其判决范围更为狭窄，仅认定“联邦法律下，无正当理由将残疾人隔离收容机构属于歧视行为”。
哥伦比亚广播公司新闻已联系司法部，征求其对这份新法律顾问办公室意见的置评。
这份新的法律顾问办公室意见并未改变现行法律，也不具备任何法律先例效力。
但它可能从根本上改变司法部和卫生与公众服务部对接受州政府资助护理的患者提出的歧视指控的执法方式。
“数十年来，法院一直认可残疾人有权在社区中生活、工作和学习，而非被不必要地与社会隔离，”曾在司法部担任民权律师、现任“民主前进”组织下属“民权红线”项目主任的里根·拉什说道。“这份意见并未改变法律，但它明确警告了数十年来保护这些权利的法律框架，以及司法部长期以来的执法职责。”
司法部周四发布的新意见，是特朗普政府一系列削弱民权保护、颠覆民权司长期使命的行动中的最新一例。
本月早些时候，法律顾问办公室还发布了另一份意见，认定“差别影响”——这一歧视法律理论认为雇主应对基于种族、族裔或性别对受保护群体造成不成比例伤害的政策负责——违宪。
民权司助理司法部长哈米特·迪伦也将执法重点从保护历史上处于边缘化地位的群体，如有色人种、 LGBTQ+群体上转移。
她已就大学涉嫌存在非法基于种族的招生政策展开了数十项调查，并在民权司内新设了一个专门执法第二修正案枪支权利的部门。
去年，迪伦在网上发布了一张自己编织的帽子的照片，并配文称：“这顶帽子比原定计划晚了一个小时，都怪那些网红智障。”
该词汇被广泛认为是对智力障碍群体的侮辱性 slur。
States aren’t required to provide community-based care for people with disabilities, new DOJ opinion claims
2026-06-18T18:21:54-0400 / CBS News
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June 18, 2026 / 6:21 PM EDT / CBS News
The Justice Department released a new legal opinion Thursday that civil rights experts said represents a significant attack against people with mental, physical and intellectual disabilities who receive state-funded services.
The Office of Legal Counsel opinion said states are not actually required by law to integrate mentally disabled patients with their peers by providing community or home-based care, a finding experts say runs counter to long-standing legal precedent and would lead to greater rates of institutionalizing people with disabilities.
The OLC opinion, authored by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lanora Pettit and posted on the DOJ’s website, reinterprets a long-standing Supreme Court case that has served as a cornerstone of America’s disability rights law.
That 1999 case, Olmstead v. LC, held that people with disabilities are entitled to receive services in their communities, rather than an institution.
“The Olmstead decision itself said that why community integration is so important is so children can be part of their families, so they can go to school, so people can be part of their communities,” said Alison Barkoff, a former DOJ attorney who was in charge of supervising Olmstead civil rights enforcement and now works as a professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. “That’s what’s at stake with this re-interpretation of Olmstead.”
The Olmstead case was brought by two women with mental and intellectual disabilities who were each repeatedly institutionalized at facilities in Georgia because they could not get coverage for the support they needed to live independently at home.
The Supreme Court held that the state had violated their civil rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Many in the disability rights community have considered the decision the civil rights equivalent of the famed 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which found that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional.
In its opinion on Thursday, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel suggested that the DOJ’s enforcement of the law has gone above and beyond what the Supreme Court intended.
“Over the past two decades, DOJ’s Civil Rights Division (“CRT”) has relied on its integration mandate and Olmstead to pressure states into discharging individuals from mental-health institutions,” the opinion says. “By threatening or bringing federal enforcement action, CRT has successfully elicited consent decrees, remedial orders, or out-of-court agreements in nearly a dozen states, obligating the participants to meet DOJ’s deinstitutionalization benchmarks.”
The opinion added that the Olmstead opinion by the Supreme Court did not in fact impose any integration mandate. Rather, it says, the finding was narrower in scope and held that “unjustified institutional isolation of persons with disabilities is a form of discrimination” under federal law.
CBS News has reached out to the Justice Department for comment on the new OLC opinion.
The OLC’s new opinion does not change the law, nor does it serve as any legal precedent.
But it could fundamentally change the way both the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services enforce allegations of discrimination by patients who received state-funded care.
“For decades, courts have recognized that people with disabilities have the right to live, work, and learn in their communities rather than being unnecessarily segregated from society,” said Regan Rush, a former civil rights attorney at the DOJ who now serves as director of a Democracy Forward project called Red Line for Civil Rights. “This opinion does not change the law, but it is a clear warning shot aimed at the legal framework that has protected those rights for decades and at the Department’s longstanding role in enforcing it.”
The DOJ’s new opinion Thursday marks the latest action in a series of efforts by the Trump administration to scale back civil rights protections and upend long-standing missions of the Civil Rights Division.
Earlier this month, the OLC authored another opinion which held that “disparate impact” — a legal theory of discrimination that holds employers liable for discrimination for policies that disproportionately harm protected groups based on race, ethnicity or gender — is unconstitutional.
Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, has also shifted the focus of enforcement efforts away from protecting historically marginalized groups such as people of color and members of the gay, lesbian and transgender communities.
She has launched dozens of investigations into universities over allegations of unlawful race-based admission policies and created a new section within the division that is solely devoted to enforcing Second Amendment gun rights.
Last year, Dhillon angered the disability rights community when she posted a photo of a hat she was knitting online and wrote: “This hat is an hour behind schedule thanks to influencer retards.”
That word is widely considered to be an insulting slur against people with intellectual disabilities.
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