Battle v. Tennessee

In 2022, DRA joined the plaintiffs’ counsel team in Disability Rights Tennessee’s lawsuit on behalf of several d/Deaf Tennesseans with intellectual and developmental disabilities and/or mental health disabilities and Disability Rights Tennessee to challenge the State of Tennessee’s failure to ensure that effective communication is provided to d/Deaf people who receive services from the Tennessee Department of Disability and Aging (DDA) (formerly the Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities) and its Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (DMHSAS). 

The plaintiffs in the case allege, in part, violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act as a result of the departments’ failure to ensure that d/Deaf people have an opportunity to access the benefits of these agencies’ important services. Among other things, these failures include discriminatory administration of the group home licensing system, and a lack of access to sign language interpreters, videophones, and signing group home staff or housemates.

In September 2024, a federal judge in the Middle District of Tennessee substantially denied the State of Tennessee’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit. In her opinion, Judge Aleta A. Trauger held that DDA and DMHSAS are service agencies that must abide by the anti-discrimination provisions of the ADA. The court noted that “the idea that [DDA] and DMHSAS are themselves services agencies—and not simply commercial licensors or disinterested regulators—is not some invention of the plaintiffs for the purposes of litigation” and held that where the licensee is, in effect, actually carrying out a government program on the government’s terms the ADA “recognizes that a government agency’s decision to rely on a privatize-and-license model, rather than a direct services model, does not inherently excuse it from its antidiscrimination obligations in performing the underlying public services.”

The opinion only dismisses the plaintiffs’ claims for individual monetary damages under the ADA, based on a finding that the government is immune from those claims in this instance; all other claims alleged in the case can go forward, including those for damages under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. The case is currently in discovery, with trial set for September 2025. Plaintiffs are represented by Disability Rights Advocates, Disability Rights Tennessee, and Baker Donelson.