RESTORED
Olmstead v. L. C.
527 U.S. 581 (1999) · 1999
Two women were kept in an institution after clinicians agreed they were ready to leave. The Court named the confinement itself as the discrimination.
“Unjustified isolation, we hold, is properly regarded as discrimination based on disability.”
The Ruling
6–3: Unjustified institutional isolation of people with disabilities is discrimination under Title II of the ADA. States must provide community-based placement where treatment professionals agree it is appropriate, the individual does not object, and it can be reasonably accommodated.
The Personhood Argument Not Made
The finding that matters is conceptual: segregation is not a byproduct of care but a harm in itself, because it broadcasts that this class is unfit for community life. The Court treated the place a person is kept as a statement about their standing. Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson were not denied treatment; they were denied the recognition that they belonged outside — which is a personhood claim, not a medical one.
The Execution Gap Created
The right is real and, unusually, structural. Its reach is bounded by the "reasonable modifications" limit and by the availability of community placements a state must actually fund. The recognition arrived in 1999; whether it operates in a given life still depends on whether the placement exists.
Primary sources & research
Related cases
Part of The Personhood Prism, the companion to The Execution Gap by Thomas William Hornig. See all personhood cases →