AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- Texas officials have struck a deal with the U.S. Justice Department to change how mentally handicapped people are housed in state-run institutions.
The settlement, which Justice Department officials said brings Texas into compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act, ends a lawsuit filed on behalf of disabled individuals who had been forced to live in nursing homes. They will now be able to live in communal homes and other nursing home alternatives.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit charged thousands of disabled individuals in Texas were confined to nursing homes due to state regulations and failures in screening procedures that forced them into the more restrictive living situations.
"We applaud the state's commitment to initiate steps providing real options to Texans with intellectual and other developmental disabilities, so that they can live and engage in their own communities, rather than spend their lives in nursing facilities," Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Jocelyn Samuels said. "The Supreme Court made clear more than a decade ago that people with disabilities must be provided the same opportunities to participate in community life as those without disabilities. This agreement is an important step to making that promise a reality in Texas."
The case was filed after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1999 Olmstead decision, which holds a handicapped person's "confinement in an institution severely diminishes the everyday life activities of individuals, including family relations, social contacts, work options, economic independence, educational advancement and cultural enrichment."
