At Little Village, we believe something should never have to be explained:
Disabled people belong in their communities.
They belong in schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, playgrounds, libraries, restaurants, churches, parks, and everywhere else people live their lives.
That is why Little Village strongly condemns the September 23, 2026 ruling in Texas v. Kennedy and the federal government’s decision to abandon important regulatory protections supporting community integration for people with disabilities.
This is not simply a legal argument about words in a regulation. It is about what kind of society we are building for disabled children and adults.
What Happened in Texas v. Kennedy?
On September 23, a federal judge approved an agreement between the federal government and several states, including Texas and Florida, that removed the community-integration provisions from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ 2024 regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.
Those provisions included requirements and definitions recognizing the importance of providing services to disabled people in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs. The ruling applies nationwide.
However, the ruling did not repeal Section 504. It did not repeal the Americans with Disabilities Act. And it did not overturn the Supreme Court’s Olmstead v. L.C. decision. Those protections remain law. For more background, read the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund’s explanation of the ruling and its effects.
What changed is the federal regulatory framework that gave agencies clearer direction about community integration. That distinction matters. So does the message this decision sends.
Segregation Is Not a Disability Service Model
For decades, disabled people were routinely separated from everyone else:
- Children were placed in separate schools or classrooms simply because they were disabled.
- Adults were placed in institutions rather than supported in their own homes.
- People were told where they could live, learn, work, and spend their time.
We know where that thinking leads. And we refuse to go backward.
Little Village does not believe that the answer to disability is separation. We also do not believe that inclusion means putting a child into a classroom, providing no meaningful support, and calling that inclusion.
Real inclusion requires:
- Appropriate accommodations
- Communication access
- Sensory accommodations
- Individualized instruction
- Occupational therapy, speech and language support, and behavioral and emotional support when appropriate
- Educators who understand disability
- Listening to disabled people themselves
- Changing environments when the environment is creating unnecessary barriers
The goal should not be to make a disabled person fit into an environment that was never designed for them. The goal should be to build environments where different kinds of people can participate.
Integration Does Not Mean “One Size Fits All”
This is especially important when we talk about autistic children. There is a tendency to turn the inclusion debate into a simple argument:
Separate classrooms are bad. General education classrooms are good.
The science is more complicated than that.
Research does not support a one-size-fits-all placement model. A systematic review of research comparing inclusive and segregated educational settings found that the academic and psychosocial effects of inclusion were not uniformly positive or negative. The researchers also noted significant weaknesses in the available evidence.
That is not an argument against inclusion. It is an argument for better inclusion.
Another 2024 systematic review of social inclusion for autistic students in mainstream schools examined 56 studies. Researchers found that interventions could increase autistic students’ access to school activities and opportunities for interaction — but simply putting autistic children in the same building as everyone else did not automatically create friendship or meaningful social connection.
That distinction is critical. Physical inclusion is not the same thing as social inclusion.
A child sitting in the corner of a general education classroom for six hours is technically present. That does not necessarily mean that child is participating.
What the Science Tells Us
Human beings learn through relationships. In school, children:
- Observe and imitate one another
- Communicate, negotiate, and cooperate
- Disagree and solve problems together
- Develop friendships
- Learn what other people think, feel, value, and experience
Those experiences help build the social world in which children will eventually become adults. School is one of the most important places where those experiences happen.
Research on inclusive education has found that students without disabilities can also experience social benefits from inclusive classrooms, including greater acceptance, understanding, and reduced prejudice toward disabled peers. Academic effects for nondisabled students are generally neutral or mixed rather than showing a consistent academic penalty from inclusion. See this review of research on the effects of inclusive education.
In other words: inclusion isn’t only about what disabled children learn from everyone else. It is also about what everyone else learns from disabled children.
- A child who grows up knowing autistic people does not have to learn about autism solely through stereotypes.
- A child who grows up alongside a student who communicates differently learns that communication does not have only one form.
- A child who sees a classmate use AAC learns that having something to say and speaking are not the same thing.
- A child who sees a classmate need movement, sensory accommodations, or additional processing time learns that fairness does not mean everybody gets exactly the same thing.
These are not abstract lessons. They are lessons about how to live together.
Autistic People Should Not Have to Earn Belonging
At Little Village, we use the phrase presume competence for a reason.
An autistic child may communicate differently. They may learn differently. They may move differently. They may regulate their nervous system differently. They may need more time. They may need different tools.
None of those things tells us how much that person is capable of contributing.
Too often, disability services begin with the wrong question:
“What is wrong with this child?”
We want to ask a different question:
“What does this child need in order to participate?”
That is a very different starting point. It changes the entire conversation.
Inclusion Must Include Autistic Voices
Disabled people should be involved in designing the systems that serve them. Little Village believes autistic adults should have meaningful roles in shaping programs for autistic children, including:
- Curriculum
- Sensory environments
- Communication systems
- Family resources
- Staff training
- Transition planning
- Self-advocacy
- Community participation
- Evaluation of whether a program is actually working
This isn’t just about representation. People with lived experience see things professionals can miss. They know what it feels like to be misunderstood. They know the difference between compliance and communication. They know that a quiet child is not necessarily a happy child. They know that looking “typical” does not necessarily mean a person is thriving. And they know that independence can look very different from person to person.
What Little Village Believes
Little Village believes that integration should be the starting point, not the exception. That means:
- Disability should not automatically determine who a child gets to learn beside.
- A specialized setting should be used because it is genuinely necessary for that particular child — not simply because disability makes the child inconvenient to include.
- Supports should follow the person.
- Environments should be adapted.
- Communication should be accessible.
- Sensory needs should be respected.
- Safety matters.
- Individualized needs matter.
And it means disabled people have the same fundamental human need that everybody else has: to belong.
The Science of Inclusion Is Still Developing
There are unanswered questions. There are children for whom particular environments work better than others. There are situations where specialized instruction is necessary, where smaller environments are needed, where breaks from large classroom demands are essential.
Acknowledging those realities does not require abandoning integration. Quite the opposite. It requires us to become better at it.
A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis of educational interventions for students with special educational needs and disabilities found that targeted interventions can improve educational outcomes, while the setting itself was not a simple determinant of success. The researchers found meaningful variation among students and interventions.
The lesson is not that every child belongs in one particular classroom. The lesson is that we need to provide the right supports instead of treating separation as the support.
Little Village Will Not Go Backward
The disability rights movement spent decades fighting for the right to live, learn, work, and participate in the community.
- Section 504 has been protecting people from disability discrimination for more than 50 years.
- The ADA built upon that foundation.
- Olmstead recognized that unnecessary segregation of people with disabilities can constitute discrimination.
Those protections have not disappeared because of Texas v. Kennedy. But removing federal regulatory language specifically supporting community integration creates uncertainty and weakens an important federal commitment to making integration real. The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund’s coverage of the September 2026 ruling explains why disability rights advocates are concerned.
Little Village stands with disabled people and families who are saying: we will not go backward.
Our vision is a world where:
- Autistic children are not automatically separated because they are autistic
- Accommodations are normal
- Communication differences are respected
- Sensory needs are understood
- Specialized support exists without requiring isolation
- Autistic adults have a seat at the table
- Families are partners
- Children learn alongside people who are different from them
- Belonging is not something a disabled person has to earn
Integration is not about making disabled people fit into society. Integration is about recognizing that disabled people are already part of society. They always have been.
And Little Village intends to help build a community that acts like it.
We belong here. All of us.
