Staff reviewed
CLARIFICATION ON DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE GUIDANCE TITLED, “STATEMENT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE ON ENFORCEMENT OF THE INTEGRATION MANDATE OF TITLE II OF THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT AND OLMSTEAD V. L.C.”
— STAFF
The Olmstead Guidance supplied the operational benchmarks — most integrated setting, discharge planning, community placement obligations, what counts as a fundamental alteration — that state hospitals, forensic facilities and community programs have been held to in federal enforcement, and clinicians advising on placement and discharge can no longer treat those benchmarks as the federal expectation. Institutions under Olmstead pressure, and evaluators writing placement recommendations that invoke the guidance's standards, must now anchor to the statute, the regulation and the case law directly rather than to the withdrawn document.