Right before Christmas, Jeff Sessions rolled back key disability rights protections. More is likely coming:
What seems to be happening, according to Eve Hill and numerous other disability rights advocates to whom I spoke, is that the Sessions Department of Justice is siding with sheltered workshops. Sessions has a well-known general antipathy to federal enforcement of disability rights, so he’s the perfect figure to use in rolling back this Olmstead guidance. Here, we merely have to follow the money. As Hill notes, “People who pay people with disabilities below the minimum wage get contracts that pay the regular fair market value even though they pay below minimum wage.” Many sheltered workshops are extremely profitable enterprises, grossing considerable income from the work itself, while presenting themselves to the public as educational or charitable enterprises.