President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice took the unique step of rolling back decades of legal precedent that keeps the disabled in the community earlier this year.
At a Senate candidate forum focused on the disabled Wednesday evening, the issue and the role it’s played in the Commonwealth was front and center.
Virginia has long been under a permanent injunction with the Department of Justice following years of isolation and mistreatment of the disabled in state institutions. And while that injunction has been slow to implement, the disability community has praised the DOJ’s involvement as an important tool to keep them integrated into society.
The Trump administration has since stopped relying on the legal precedent that backbones the injunction, known as the Olmstead decision.
Whether or not that roll back will impact Virginia’s permanent injunction remains to be seen, but at a forum hosted by disability advocacy group the Arc of Virginia Wednesday evening, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bert Mizusawa seemed unaware of the role the federal government was playing in protecting some of Virginia’s most vulnerable.
“I’m not sure whether DOJ is getting involved in something that I think is typically handled at the state level unless it has something to do with how federal funds are being spent," he said after being asked about the federal agency's intervention in the Commonwealth which started with investigations in 2008 before the courts got involved in 2012 with a consent decree.
"I believe this administration in particular has brought to our attention that there is a lot of fraud, waste and abuse in spending Medicare and Medicaid monies,” Mizusawa said of Trump's interest in the disabled.
Incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Warner defended the Olmstead standard and dinged the Trump admin for rolling back the protections.
“That weakening threatens to take us back to a time when people with disabilities had fewer options and less support," Warner said. "27 years after Olmstead, the question shouldn’t be whether people get to live in their communities. It should be how do we help them thrive in those communities.”
In order to accommodate both candidates' schedules, The Arc allowed both to pre-record their answers. And both had access to the questions weeks before they were asked.
Shay Ruff, a Black disabled woman and one of the event’s moderators, defended community integration at the end of the forum.
“Being part of my community gives me the freedom to make my own choices, stay connected to the people who matter to me, take part in everyday activities, and bring purpose and joy in my life,” Ruff said.
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