Along with co-author Michelle Uzeta, Executive Director of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, F&R filed an amicus brief on behalf of DREDF and eight other disability rights organizations with the goal of preserving the right of disabled people to challenge discrimination by executive agencies. DREDF has prepared a helpful plain-language explainer.
You’d think that losing a case in 2020 would have taught the Trump White House a lesson. Apparently not. During the COVID pandemic, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) sued the first Trump administration to require American Sign Language interpreters for ?White House press briefings. The court granted NAD’s motion for a preliminary injunction and not long after, the Biden White House settled, agreeing to provide interpreters for a wide range of briefings.
The second Trump administration curtailed that practice almost immediately after taking office. Tracking the administration’s broader attack on disability rights — including denouncing “accessibility” in a day-one Executive Order and creating a list of banned words that includes (among many many others) “accessible;” “autism;” “barrier(s);” “disabled;” “disability(ies);” “discrimination;” “equal opportunity;” “equality;” “excluded;” “inequality;” “integration;” “mental health;” and “segregation” — the White House defended this measure on the grounds that Trump prefers to “shape his . . . image” without having to “share his platform with [American Sign Language] interpreters.”
NAD sued again and, again, obtained a preliminary injunction requiring sign language interpreters at all publicly announced White House press briefings.
Rather than provide this simple but necessary measure, the White House is appealing the case, arguing not only that it should not have to provide interpreters but that disabled people generally should not be able to file a lawsuit to challenge any type of disability discrimination by Executive agencies.
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act prohibits recipients of federal funding and Executive agencies such as the White House from discriminating on the basis of disability. Supreme Court decisions starting in 1979 have uniformly held that there is a private right of action to enforce Section 504, that is, that individual disabled people can file a lawsuit under Section 504 directly against the entity or agency that is discriminating against them. Many courts — and even the federal government when it’s strategically advantageous to do so — agree that Section 504’s private right of action includes the right to sue Executive agencies.
The practical consequences of the government’s legal theory would be sweeping as disabled people participate in myriad federal programs and would have no way to challenge discrimination and exclusion. For example, census data from 2021 estimate that 13.3 percent of the civilian noninstitutionalized population had a disability. Thus at least 44 million of the more than 331 million people who visited national parks in 2024 likely were disabled. Similarly, more than 120 million of the 906 million passenger interactions with Transportation Security Administration checkpoints likely involved disabled people. The federal Bureau of Prisons reported holding 155,270 people in custody in 2025. Applying Bureau of Justice Statistics data indicating that 28.8 percent of federal prisoners have disabilities, this suggests that more than 44,000 disabled people are incarcerated in federal facilities.
DREDF is joined by Amici American Association of People with Disabilities, Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network, CommunicationFIRST, Disability Law United, the Disability Rights Bar Association, Justice in Aging, the National Federation of the Blind, and Paralyzed Veterans of America in challenging the Administration’s restrictive reading of Section 504.
I also want to shout out to the several generations of students in the University of Denver’s Civil Rights Clinic, who faced this issue in a case against the federal Bureau of Prisons on behalf of an incarcerated man whom they still represent. We wrote an amicus brief in support of their position and managed to convince the BOP not to rely on this argument. As always, it was a joy and privilege to work alongside such a smart and dedicated team of students.