Paul Ford
(615) 269-8530

Tennessee ADAPT will hold a press conference and rally supporters to join the caravan headed to Washington DC for the MARCH FOR JUSTICE on October 3rd. The Rolling Freedom Express will highlight the rights of all people with disabilities and call for support of the ADA.

This fall the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case Alabama v. Garrett, testing the constitutionality of the ADA. The fundamental issue to be decided by the Court is whether Congress had the constitutional authority under the 14th Amendment to enact the ADA. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law.

Garrett is the latest in a series of cases in which states have challenged Congress' power to enact legislation regulating state conduct. If the Court rules in favor of state's rights over the civil rights of people with disabilities, it will set us back a decade to the era when there was no federal standard in opposition to discrimination against people with disabilities, and no legal means to enforce civil rights. The ADA was based on Congressional findings of a long history of discrimination against people with disabilities, and recognition that states had not been doing enough to alleviate that discrimination.

In fact, states are often the worst offenders. The Congressional record of the ADA is filled with evidence that state employers have engaged in widespread intentional discrimination against people with disabilities. And the states' record of discrimination against its citizens with disabilities includes: compulsory institutionalization, ongoing segregation and forced sterilization.

Paul Summers, the Tennessee Attorney General [not an elected office], has included the state of Tennessee in support of Alabama.

"Because Tennessee has no attendant services, I have lost my job, my home, and my car," said Willie Robinson. "I live in a nursing home now and I have no choice about what time I get up in the morning, what I have for meals and what time I go to bed at night." When the Rolling Freedom Express pulls into Nashville, it will send a message to the citizens of Tennessee that people with disabilities will not sit idly by and watch as their civil rights are further undermined.