Famed Disability Rights Lawyer Gold's
Standards Remain High
By Mike Erwin
As the 10th anniversary of the monumental
U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Americans with Disabilities Act case of
Olmstead v. L.C. and E.W. approaches in June 2009, the lawyer who first
conceived of using the ADA to fight institutionalization on a large scale
continues to be aggressive in the courts.
Philadelphia native Steve Gold, 66, has no
disability and had no knowledge of the disability rights or independent living
movements until he was well into his career in the 1980s. But since 1990, he
has dedicated his professional life to pursuing high-stakes disability rights
cases. He doesn't always win and sometimes he loses big. Thus, sometimes he
goes a long time between paydays. "I often do not get any pay when we lose a
case, which does happen quite a bit," he admitted.
In the case of Helen L. v. Didario, Gold,
as counsel representing a resident of a Pennsylvania state institution, put
forth the rationale that forcing people with disabilities to be
institutionalized in order to receive support services violated Title II of
ADA, which requires states to provide services in the most integrated setting
appropriate to an individual's needs. Gold lost in the district but won in the
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1995. That case was the
catalyst for the Olmstead case in Georgia.Last fall, Gold helped win another
important victory as one of the plaintiff attorneys in the case of Freeman v.
Goldberg. Vent-using quadriplegic Clay Freeman sued the Oregon Department of
Human Services. In the settlement, the state agreed, among other things, to pay
Freeman's home assistants an additional $3 per hour to make it easier for him
to retain workers who can deliver his high level of care.
"It's so important to recognize that
people have different, individual needs and that one formula cannot fit all,"
Gold said. "By the state agreeing to recognize that Clay's and the other people
in Oregon who use vents needs are different, this settlement is one small but
important step."
You'll find Gold at every national ADAPT
action, marching along and working with the legal team on behalf of arrestees.
When Gold attended his first ADAPT action with the Philadelphia ADAPT group in
San Francisco in 1992, it cemented his commitment to disability rights work. "I
was truly blown away!" he said.
Beyond his work, the center of Gold's life
is his wife, Barbara, a pediatrician. They have been married for 43 years.
In the following interview, Gold discusses
his formative years and some of his legal cases:
Independence Today: Growing up,
what did you hear, see or experience that shaped your overall progressive
political outlook?
Gold: I grew up quite low-income in
a white, ethnic, Catholic neighborhood. I saw and heard lots of overt racism
and anti-Semitism, and I actually was the victim of a few situations.
IT: Like what?
Gold: How about having a catcher
yell to the pitcher, "Hit the kike in the head!"? I remember having to fight
after school when kids called me various names, which at the time I had no idea
what they meant but knew they were slanderous and had to be stood up against.
My late adolescence and early adulthood was extremely focused on racial civil
rights in the North and anti-war activities, both of which resulted in a number
of arrests for civil disobedience.
IT: Many progressives who don't have
disabilities never make the disability connection. What did you experience that
put it all together?
Gold: I went to law school specifically to
do poverty law. Throughout the 1970s, when I worked at legal services, I was in
charge of class actions and brought many Medicaid, public assistance, education
lawsuits. But I never, never had either disability cases or disability
awareness.
In 1982, I had to quit legal aid over a
political issue and was a sole practitioner with no work. A blind friend came
in my office and told me about blind Social Security employees who provided
telephone information but were not permitted to give the same information face
to face because the regional SSA rep said the public would not trust them. He
began my education. In 1984, the ACLU brought me a case that a law professor at
Temple had lost and asked if I was interested in taking the appeal. It was
about a hearing-impaired school bus driver who wore hearing aids. The
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation would not renew his license because
they said he might turn off his aids if the kids were too loud, he might not
hear a siren, his batteries would go and a number of other stereotypes. Winning
this case started me on my understanding of how we non-disabled had a lot of
stereotypes.
I also met and saw a lot of extremely
active disabled folks and heard about their work. I am still a sole
practitioner, but as I've gotten older I've tried to bring cases only with a
local co-counsel. In the 2000s, my wife has a veto. I make a preliminary
decision regarding how important is the suit and then she can nix it. She tries
to make me justify why the case is important, how much travel is involved, etc.
She and I were arrested a lot together! Her politics and mine are entirely in
sync. But she has much more common sense than I do.
IT: How did the Helen L. case turn
into the Olmstead case?
Gold: I was in Georgia doing a
workshop and Sue Jamieson, a legal aid lawyer there, told me about the two
women (L.C. and E.W.). I sent her all my briefs, etc., and they used it and won
in circuit (court).
IT: What do you think of the
Olmstead decision?
Gold: It's a 10-year-old compromise
that I hope in the next 10 years will be eliminated. Waiting lists to get out
of institutions and to end segregation might have made sense in 1999. For a few
years, a "plan" made sense. But 10 years later? Anyone who wants out should be
able to get out immediately!
IT: What difference has it
made?
Gold: It has changed the flow of
the oceans! In (fiscal year) 1999, Medicaid spent 89 percent of long-term-care
funds on nursing homes and 11 percent on community-based services. In (fiscal
year) 2007, it was 69 percent on nursing homes and 31 percent on community.
Billions of dollars have gone from nursing homes to the community.
IT: What was a damaging case that
you lost?
Gold: Three Rivers Center for
Independent Living v. Pittsburgh Housing Authority, 2004. We claimed that the
housing authority violated the 504 (regulations) by not having 5 percent
accessible units. The court held we could not enforce the 5 percent requirement
-- only HUD could. We amended our complaint, sued only under the 504 statute
directly and not the (regulations), and got the Housing Authority to agree to 7
percent. However, the legal principle we lost really hurts! It's been adversely
cited in my cases.
IT: ADAPT-type activists don't like
to rely too heavily on lawsuits because fickle courts put too many factors
beyond their control. What do you think of that?
Gold: What an understatement! I
agree 100 percent. But it's more nuanced. Lawsuits should be one handle in a
political struggle, but too often people, including people with disabilities,
stop the political actions and rely on the lawsuit and lawyers!
IT: What impact, good and bad, have
lawyers and lawsuits had on the movement?
Gold: Too many lawyers, including
disability lawyers, do not understand that our type of litigation is a part of
a political struggle and movement and as such must be controlled by this
movement. The welfare rights movement died in the early 1970s, in my opinion,
because the movement depended too heavily on the lawyers and forgot the
grass-roots actions, and the lawyers also forgot. It could happen with the
disability movement.
Mike Ervin is a writer and member of
ADAPT, a group that works for the civil rights of people with
disabilities. |
