In September 2020, a whistleblower complaint was filed alleging that hysterectomies are being performed on women at an immigration detention center in alarmingly high rates. Regrettably, forced sterilizations are part of the nation’s longstanding history of weaponizing reproduction to subjugate socially marginalized communities. While public outrage in response to the whistleblower complaint was swift and relentless, it largely failed to acknowledge how eugenic ideologies and practices, including compulsory sterilizations, are ongoing and deeply entrenched in ableism. Indeed, a conversation that recognizes the ways in which eugenics continues to target people with disabilities is long overdue.

This Article contextualizes how eugenics has targeted people with disabilities over time, the ways in which these ideologies and practices persist, and why analysis and advocacy concerning eugenics—including the current abuses at immigration detention centers—that do not center the experiences of people with disabilities, especially people with disabilities who are also members of other socially marginalized communities, are inadequate. First, the Article explores the evolution of eugenics and its harmful effects on people with disabilities in the United States, including contemporary examples of eugenic policies and practices. Next, it describes ableism and its relation to eugenics, highlighting how eugenics is deeply rooted in ableism. Finally, the Article concludes by suggesting a path forward that addresses the role of ableism in eugenics, specifically discussing normative legal and policy implications. It also considers opportunities for collaboration across communities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been especially devastating for people with disabilities, as well as other members of marginalized communities. Indeed, an emerging body of scholarship has revealed striking disparities experienced by people with disabilities. In particular, scholars have shined a light on issues relating to triage policies that allow for the rationing of critical health care and resources, such as ventilators, for people with disabilities if resources become limited and hospitals cannot treat all patients during the pandemic. These injustices are a deserving issue that urgently warrants extensive consideration by policymakers, legal professionals, and scholars.

At the same time, however, it is crucial to elucidate the ways in which the inequities people with disabilities are experiencing during COVID-19 are the result of deeply rooted injustices that have endured over time. To do so, a comprehensive analysis of the inequalities experienced by people with disabilities before and during the pandemic is needed, focused on understanding how law and policy affect these disparities. This Article, therefore, builds on, incorporates, and extends the existing scholarship about COVID-19 and disabled people by positioning it within the health justice framework and proposing normative legal and policy solutions to address deeply entrenched inequities that will affect people with during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed thirty years ago with the promise of “equality of opportunity” for people with disabilities. Notwithstanding, a nascent body of scholarship indicates that parents with disabilities experience substantial and pervasive inequities within the child welfare system, and that the ADA is often disregarded or misapplied by child welfare agencies and courts. Yet, despite extensive legal and social science scholarship about child welfare system involvement among parents with disabilities, no studies have empirically examined why the ADA is not effectively safeguarding the rights of parents with disabilities.

This Article responds to that scholarly void and offers novel and critically needed data on the barriers and facilitators to compliance with the ADA by the child welfare system. This Study draws qualitative data from forty-five in-depth interviews with parents with disabilities, child welfare workers, and parents’ attorneys. Three themes emerged from the data indicating barriers and facilitators that affect compliance with the ADA by the child welfare system. First, knowledge, training, and information about the ADA by parents with disabilities, child welfare workers, and legal professionals impede or enable ADA compliance. Second, institutional support—especially well-defined agency policies and procedures about the ADA, agency culture and leadership, and resource availability—impact compliance with the ADA. Third, factors related to the legal and social context in which cases involving disabled parents occur—particularly tensions between children’s rights and parents’ rights and issues relating to the intersection between disability and child welfare law—are barriers or facilitators to ADA compliance. This Article concludes by identifying critical areas for further research and discussing the policy and practice implications of the findings.