Not Dead Yet Condemns Order in Texas v. Kennedy
On September 23, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas granted an order establishing a settlement for the Texas v. Kennedy lawsuit. The final settlement vacates the integration-focused 45 C.F.R. § 84.76 regulation and other parts of the Section 504 final regulations that concern community integration, in particular those that reference the “most integrated setting appropriate.” The settlement does not alter the remainder of the 2024 regulations.
We at Not Dead Yet strongly condemn the settlement as what it is: a bald-faced attempt to ignore the requirements of Section 504 and the ADA. The settlement is inconsistent with more than twenty years of established court precedent and both the text and context of both laws. Ignoring the law will not change it, and the binding legal precedent remains the same, but we are nonetheless appalled.
Many of the countless gains made by people with disabilities in the United States over the last twenty-seven years are based on the unequivocal fact that we are protected by civil rights laws that demand our integration. Accessible public transportation, integration in education, equal employment and the deinstitutionalization movement are founded on the ADA’s dismantling of the “shameful wall of exclusion.” The integration requirements of Section 504 and the ADA are a part of and critical to this long history of increasing integration.
Not Dead Yet is founded on the premise that disabled lives have equal worth. We firmly believe that people with disabilities have the right to live in the community, with access to the supports and services they need to survive. We demand accountability from the medical profession and oppose any attempt to cheapen the value of disabled life or to claim that disabled people are “too expensive” or “too inconvenient” for equal treatment. The problem has never been a lack of funding, but rather a lack of political and moral will required to provide it.
To that end we urge the federal government to change its course and will oppose any attempt to return our people to institutions. Our lives are worth living, and we are Not Dead Yet.