Community-Based Response Act

Raised concerns in two letters to the Senate, led by the Bazelon Center, about the views of Judge Amy Coney Barrett regarding the Affordable Care Act, her dissent from a decision in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that concluded that the Trump administrations public charge rule discriminates against people with disabilities, and her decision finding that Wisconsin didnt discriminate against children with learning disabilities by forcing them to apply for placement in school districts separately from other children and allowing their exclusion on the basis of their service needs. Discussed with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development the accessibility of their website. Department of Labor - Office of Disability Employment Policy Proposed Transfer of Ticket to Work Program Raised concerns regarding the Presidents budget proposal to transfer the Ticket to Work Program from the Social Security Administration to the U.S. Department of Labor. United Spinal has raised concerns with the moving of the program due to limited staff expertise on the TTW Program at DOL and other issues. Department of Health and Human Services - Office for Civil Rights United Spinal endorsed a letter to OCR, facilitated by Not Dead Yet, regarding the need for nondiscrimination regulations in organ transplants and suicide prevention. Health Innovation Alliance coalition - United Spinal signed on to a Congressional letter in support of the need to build on and clarify existing statute to modernize public health data collection, transmission, and reporting systems, through specific partnerships with expertise in the private sector, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to make necessary data available for public health officials, policy makers, and frontline providers to improve decision making, care delivery, and patient outcomes. United Spinal Association signed onto a letter led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to the EEOC, asking them to extend the comment period on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would significantly change their conciliation procedures and potentially make it harder for people experiencing workplace discrimination from seeking redress. United Spinal signed onto a petition to the Federal Communications Commission, along with many in the disability community, (the National Disability Leadership Alliance) urging FCC to reconsider and revise its Order in this proceeding to mandate that, by July 16, 2022 - i.e., the same deadline that applies to the covered providers implementation of voice calling to 988 - wireless carriers and covered text providers, as defined in the Text-to-911 proceeding, also must implement text-to-988 capability to communicate with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (Lifeline) and its trained counselors, so that the benefits of the easy-to-remember and -dial 988 code will be equally available to deaf, hard-of-hearing, late-deafened, deafblind, speech-disabled, or deaf with other disabilities people in crisis and to others in crisis for whom texting is the predominant mode of mobile communication. Provided recommendations to the Community-Based Response Act, S. 4791, legislation that would provide grants to establish non-police emergency response for certain crisis interventions. The disability community is seeking to engage Congressional offices interested in this area to ensure that the disability perspective is considered in the development of such legislation. Opposed H.R. 8478, the Online Accessibility Act. This bill would significantly weaken the ADAs protections regarding website accessibility.