Reduction in Disability Civil Rights Enforcement

Since January 2025, the Civil Rights Division has brought far fewer disability civil rights matters, with markedly fewer investigations, enforcement actions, and settlements addressing ADA compliance issues than in prior years. The Division’s own website reflects an approximately 85 percent reduction of disability-related enforcement activity during the first year of the Trump Administration as compared to the final year of the Biden Administration. This reduction reflects the Division’s decision to deprioritize disability enforcement in favor of other political priorities, compounded by leadership actions that pushed out, reassigned, or sidelined career staff, resulting in a significant loss of personnel available to conduct disability rights work—a pattern consistent with changes across the Division’s core civil rights enforcement areas. One year into the current Administration, the Division’s Disability Rights Section remains without a Section Chief, after political leadership pushed out the long-time Section Chief in April 2025. Read more about the Division’s staffing changes.

Possible Regulatory Change to the Title II Web Accessibility Rule

While still in the early regulatory stages, on September 22, 2025, the Department published a notice that it may “reconsider whether some of the regulatory provisions imposed by the [Title II web accessibility rule] could be made less costly.”

Reversing Positions on Gender Dysphoria as a Covered Disability 

The Civil Rights Division reversed its legal position dating back to 2015 that gender dysphoria may qualify as a disability under the ADA. Read more about the Division’s LGBTQI+ work.

Seeking Dismissal and Closing Cases Regarding People with Behavioral Health Disabilities

As part of its withdrawal from police accountability pattern-or-practice enforcement, the Division moved to dismiss lawsuits and closed multiple investigations. As relevant to disability enforcement, these actions included the dismissal of two lawsuits and the closure of three additional investigations in which the Division had previously documented systemic ADA violations involving police responses to people with behavioral health disabilities. Read more about the Division’s policing work.

Use of the “R-Word” by Division Political Leadership 

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon drew sharp criticism for using the “R-word,” a deeply offensive slur against people with intellectual disabilities, to insult conservative influencers who were criticizing Attorney General Pam Bondi. When questioned about the offensive term, a member of AAG Dhillon’s leadership team reportedly responded, “Who cares?” That episode marked an extraordinary and troubling development for the federal government’s chief enforcer of the ADA and other disability civil rights laws.

Retreat from Oversight in Integration Mandate Cases

Settlement agreements ending the unnecessary segregation and institutionalization of people with disabilities typically require changes to state disability service systems. These reforms expand access to community-based services and create mechanisms for identifying and connecting people to those services. To be effective, they often involve multiple state agencies and require changes to long-entrenched policies and practices. Because these agreements can impact thousands of people with disabilities, their families, and service providers statewide, the Civil Rights Division’s past practice was to seek appointment of an independent monitor to assess compliance with the settlement terms. Monitors were typically disability services professionals with demonstrated expertise in developing and scaling community-based systems. The monitors would serve as independent and trusted stewards of the jurisdiction’s progress.

The Division is retreating from this longstanding practice. In two settlements—South Carolina and Maine—the Division and the respective state defendants sought for the Division itself to assume the role of monitor. This resource-intensive approach would undoubtedly stretch the Division’s staff, which has been greatly diminished in numbers and subject matter expertise. It also raises concerns about independence and credibility, given that any determinations would be reviewed by the Division’s political leadership rather than an independent expert. Failure to monitor these agreements effectively would, at best, remove pressure from states to comply and, at worst, risk the health and self-determination of the very people whose rights these cases were brought to protect.

The South Carolina settlement, first entered in December 2025, assigns the Division a monitoring role. In Maine, the Division and the State sought to amend a 2024 settlement that had appointed an independent monitor by replacing that monitor with the Division. Notably, the proposed amendments also sought to remove provisions of the agreement related to community engagement with people impacted by the settlement. The court rejected the proposed amendments following objections from representatives of people with disabilities. Read more about United States v. Maine, below.