Last year, over forty Montana-based organizations led by people with disabilities and serving people with disabilities joined forces to ask the Attorney General to stand down from his lawsuit asking a judge to rule Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the nation’s oldest civil rights law for people with disabilities, unconstitutional and unenforceable. We were successful then, and the original complaint was withdrawn. However, Montana’s Attorney General is once again fighting Section 504 regulations that ensure integration for people with disabilities in schools and communities, and that protect the parental rights of people with disabilities.
Once again, disability-led organizations have come together and are asking other organizations and individuals to goin us in asking the attorney general to drop out of this lawsuit.
Below is the text of a letter form the disability-led coordinating committee. We ask all Montanans with disabilities, all organizations that serve people with disabilities, and all Montana businesses, organizations, and individuals that support the rights of disabled Montanans to review and sign the letter. A signup sheet is linked at the bottom of the page, below the text of the letter.
Dear Attorney General Knudsen,
You continue to work to dismantle the civil, educational, and parental rights of Montanans with disabilities through the case you brought in federal court. Montana citizens ask you to withdraw from this lawsuit.
Just like the average Montanan, the Montana legislature, and administration support community living for people with disabilities in our state. Montana has long invested in home and community-based services, that preserve and support individual choice. Montana is actively updating our Olmstead Plan to strengthen community integration of people with disabilities into the wider community. The lawsuit undermines Montanan’s own state-led efforts. Protecting community living aligns with Montana values: freedom, fiscal responsibility and strong families and communities.
Despite Montana valuing people with disabilities living in our communities, you decided unilaterally to bring a lawsuit on behalf of Montana to preserve the state’s right to use federal money in ways that would segregate people with disabilities in institutions away from our communities. You say you specifically have a problem with this language from the regulations that says federally funded programs should be provided in:
a setting that provides individuals with disabilities the opportunity to interact with nondisabled persons to the fullest extent possible. These settings provide opportunities to live, work, and receive services in the greater community, like individuals without disabilities; are located in mainstream society; offer access to community activities and opportunities at times, frequencies and with persons of an individual’s choosing; and afford individuals choice in their daily life activities.
You also challenge language that protects parental rights and would prohibit Montana and other states from using discriminatory motives when considering the rights of parents with disabilities such as:
(1) “[d]ecisions based on speculation, stereotypes, or generalizations that a parent, caregiver, foster parent, or prospective parent, because of a disability, cannot safely care for a child;” and (2) “[d]ecisions based on speculation, stereotypes, or generalizations about a child with a disability.”
Your lawsuit literally quotes these two passages about community inclusion and parental rights as if they are bad things. You seek to have a federal judge rule them unenforceable. Your requests do not reflect the will of Montanans at large or the repeated investments in community services from the Montana Legislature and Governor.
Valuing “community” and “parental rights” are not extremist federal government overreach by the current Trump administration you are suing. Community and family are long held Montana values, they are long held American values. Montanans with disabilities simply want what non-disabled Montanans already have, the right to live in the communities of their choosing with the people of their choosing, including their own children if they chose to have them.
You and several attorneys general from other states originally brought this lawsuit in late 2024 to tear down the entirety of the nation’s oldest civil rights law for people with disability, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. You wanted a federal judge to rule the fifty plus year old law “unconstitutional” and “unenforceable.” In early 2025, Montana’s disability community raised concerns in a letter to you and many other disabled people across the country did the same in their states. You and your colleagues wisely backed down from your initial request to find the entire law unconstitutional. When the Trump administration agreed with your request to rescind several provisions of the 504 regulations you did not like, eight of your colleagues from other states left the case all together. However, that was not enough for you and eight other states’ attorneys general. You and this smaller group continue to pursue your attack on the disability community’s rights that the Trump administration kept in the regulations.
For decades, Section 504 has helped thousands of Montanans receive daily support in their own homes instead of being forced into nursing homes, hospitals, or other institutions far from the people and places that make Montana home. Unlike you, Montanans do not see community-based services as luxuries. They are lifelines, not just for people with disabilities, but for the entire community that benefits from disabled Montanans’ contributions:
- For parents who want to raise their children at home.
- For elders who want to age in familiar places.
- For young adults who want to work, study, and build their future here.
- For people with the most significant support needs who deserve the same dignity, respect, and independence as anyone else.
Montana is committed to these principles. We want you to be committed to them too. Our state’s future depends on strong, sustainable community supports that reflect the values of community and family that we hold dear. It is time for you to drop this attack on Montanans with disabilities.
Sincerely,