Pivotal Rulings Ahead for Law on Disabilities

Supreme Court to Begin to Chart ADA/Managed Care Protections

WASHINGTON -- Beginning on Wednesday with a case that some lawyers have labeled the Brown vs. Board of Education of the disability rights movement, the Supreme Court is embarking on an unusually extensive review of a single federal statute, the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The case scheduled for Wednesday, the first of the four, is different. There is no easy remedy at hand for the problems facing the plaintiffs, two Georgia women whose disabilities include mental retardation, mental illness and brain damage. In suing the state the two women, Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson, sought not employment but a life outside the Georgia Regional Hospital in Atlanta, a large state institution. Both women spent many months in the hospital waiting for placement in a home-like environment that their doctors said would be medically and socially appropriate but for which there were long waiting lists.

The question in the case, Olmstead vs. L.C., No. 98-536, is whether the Americans with Disabilities Act requires a state to offer such a setting, for example, a small, supervised group home, for people for whom such a setting is appropriate. The federal appeals court in Atlanta ruled last year that it does.