Olmstead at Five: Assessing the Impact
June 2004 Olmstead at Five: Assessing the Impact This paper examines the impact of Olmstead v. L.C. five years after the United States Supreme Court's 1999 landmark decision. Olmstead established two legal principles fundamental to health policy for persons with disabilities. The first is that the medically unjustifiable institutionalization of persons with disabilities who desire to live in the community violates Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which applies to publicly funded services. The second is that states have a legal obligation to affirmatively remedy such discriminatory practices through reasonable modifications to public programs and . . .
