April 21, 2005
Greetings to Friends and Supporters of
the Arizona Center for Disability Law
Thank
you for the opportunity to share information with you about some of the great
work the Arizona Center for Disability Law does each and every day. If you
would prefer to opt out of our email list, let us know and this will be the only
e-mail you will receive from us. If you have ideas for updates or issues
you would like us to address, please let me know. You can reach me at
lcohen@acdl.com.
I
am happy to report that Center staff continue to make progress on many fronts on
behalf of individuals with disabilities. Here is a brief report on some of
our many recent accomplishments.
Center Celebrates 10 Years of
Protection and Advocacy
In
1995, the ACDL became its own stand alone non profit public interest law
firm assisting Arizonans with disabilities in asserting their legal and civil
rights. In the last 10 years, the ACDL has grown from 22 staff to 39
staff members statewide with a budget of 2.8 million dollars. In the last
year, the ACDL assisted over 1,900 people with disabilities on individual cases,
provided information on legal rights to another 2,500 Arizonans and impacted the
lives of thousands more through our class action litigation and policy work.
This
year, the Center will host two celebrations to honor our own achievements over
the last 10 years, one in Tucson on May 4 and a larger event in Phoenix in the
fall. The May 4 Tucson event will take place at Cafe 54, 54 Pennington
Street from 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. A copy of the invitation is attached.
Please join us in celebrating our work over the last decade.
2005 State Legislature
As
I reported to you in February, our staff is hard at work to make sure the
legislature creates positive policy initiatives for people with disabilities.
Again, I would remind you to visit one of our coalition partners, the Governor's
Council on Development Disabilities, at www.azgcdd.org
and click on public policy updates to find the most comprehensive summary and
status of bills of interest to individuals with disabilities.
Senate Bill 1300: Voting Rights and
Limited Guardianship - failed to pass. Senator John Huppenthal (R-20) is the
primary sponsor. This bill would make positive changes to voting rights
and guardianship laws to allow the Court to decide, when assessing an individual's
capacity, whether an individual may retain the right to vote while under a
limited guardianship. I am happy to report that the full Senate
unanimously approved this legislation on March 3. The House Government
Reform and Financial Accountability Committee unanimously approved this bill on
March 31. The bill was also referred to the House Judiciary Committee.
Committee Chair Eddie Farnsworth (R-22) would not hear the bill in his
Committee. Our staff worked hard to find a striker vehicle to keep the
measure moving forward this session. SB 1186 was amended in the House Ways
and Means Committee on April 4 to include SB 1300 as well as another voter
registration bill; however, the Rules Committee would not recommend the
amendment to the striker because of single subject matter concerns. As you
may know, SB 1300 amended 3 titles: Title 14, Guardianship; Title 16, Elections;
and Title 41, State Department of Veteran Affairs Guardianship.
House Bill 2534: Special Education;
Dispute Resolution - active. Representative Laura Knaperek (R-17) is
the primary sponsor. This bill would make positive changes to the
Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) due process rules that govern special
education students in Arizona. Currently, Arizona has a two-tier dispute
resolution system that involves an initial hearing at the local educational
agency, with an appeal to the Arizona Department of Education, after which an
aggrieved party may file suit in Court. The legislation moves Arizona to a
one-tier system using Administrative Law Judges at the Office of Administrative
Hearings, after which parties may proceed directly to Court. This bill
received some opposition in the House from the Arizona School Risk Retention
Trust (insurers to school districts) but the legislation passed the House with a
42-17 vote at the end of February. Since then, the Center has met with
representatives from the Trust and have worked to craft an amendment that
addresses some Trust issues while keeping the intent and integrity of the new
one-tier system. As a result, the bill passed the Senate K-12 Committee on
March 23 and the full Senate on April 12 unanimously.
AIMS Legislation - active.
As you know, the Center has been supportive of policy changes that remove the
AIMS graduation requirement for all children, not just children with
disabilities. Numerous bills were introduced this session that dealt with
AIMS; however, the Center focused our attention on SB 1069 (sponsored by Senator
Verschoor (R-22)) and HB 2294 (sponsored by Representative Andy Biggs (R-22)).
Both bills remove the graduation requirement from AIMS for all students. SB 1069
received a do pass recommendation from the Senate K-12 Committee. HB 2294
became a striker-amendment in the House on SB 1038. SB 1038 passed the
House of Representatives 38-16 on April 4. SB 1038 now heads back to the
Senate. Senate leadership continues to oppose both bills.
In the meantime, SB 1352, sponsored by
Senator Toni Hellon (R-26) is moving forward and will likely make it to the
Governor. SB 1352 prohibits the use of AIMS as a graduation requirement
for children with disabilities, children who receive special education services
and have an IEP and children with 504 plans if certain requirements are met.
This bill unanimously passed the Senate March 10 and will be voted on by the
House early in April.
ACDL Provides Comprehensive Legal
Assistance to Individuals with Mental Illness or Behavioral Health Problems
The
Center's work in mental health is probably known more widely for our
groundbreaking class action lawsuits: Arnold
v. Sarn and J.K.
v. Eden. But the Center
works everyday with individuals with mental illness on a myriad of problems that
often require assistance from our attorneys and advocates in areas ranging from
housing to employment to special education. I wanted to share with you
some of the recent successes we have had in representing individuals with mental
illness outside of our class action work.
Mental Health Team
Staff
Advocate Margaret DuMouchel was successful in assisting a family who's child was
not getting the services she needed from Value Options (VO) in Maricopa County.
The child had been released from the hospital with prescriptions for
psychotropic medications, the cost of which VO had refused to completely cover.
The family could not afford to pay for the medications and the child would
regress without intervention. Margaret filed two appeals on her behalf.
Both appeals resolved before hearing, with VO agreeing to reimburse the parent
for the medication she had privately paid for and to authorize a second needed
medication. The Center was able to resolve the medication issue and ensure
that this child now has every opportunity to recover from her illness.
In
another case, Staff Attorney Cheryl Koch-Martinez successfully assisted a client
who was in Section 8 housing in an apartment in Phoenix and who had received an
eviction notice for non-payment of rent in early December 2003. The client
reported the notice to his case manager, who initially told him that she could
not help him, but some time later decided to try to work something out with the
client's apartment manager. Unfortunately, by that time, the client had
received a notice for an eviction hearing. While the case manager was
negotiating with the apartment manager, and before anything had been finalized,
she advised the client not to go to his eviction hearing. Relying on that
advice, the client did not go and was forced to leave his apartment on very
short notice, which meant that he had to leave many of his possessions in the
apartment. The client was then admitted into the hospital for medical and
psychiatric reasons that same day, and was never able to retrieve his
possessions. The case manager never made any attempts to secure them
during that time. Cheryl successfully intervened and obtained the
following in a settlement with VO: (1) flex funds to obtain a WalMart card in
the amount of $514.67, to purchase basic items; (2) payment of $252.00 for
carpet cleaning; (3) payment of a $689.75 bill related to the eviction; (4)
payment to the client in the amount of $5,000; and (6) measures at VO to prevent
this situation from happening to other individuals in the future.
Special Education Team
Managing
attorney, Jerri Katzerman obtained compensatory educational services for a child
with emotional and learning disability as well as a visual impairment. The
child enrolled with a Phoenix area school district in August 2004 and in October
2004, the school district learned that the child had been involved in off-campus
criminal conduct occurring in the home, sixteen months earlier, before the
student was enrolled in the district, while being served under the auspices of
an individual education program that failed to identify his primary disabling
condition. Upon learning of the incident, the district moved for expulsion
and immediately imposed a long-term suspension pending expulsion. The
Center requested a due process hearing. The Hearing Officer ruled that the
district's manifestation determination was erroneous because the district failed
to consider the impact of the previously undiagnosed disability on the student's
behavior. The Hearing Officer also agreed that the district's evaluation
and behavioral assessment were inappropriate and ordered that the parents be
provided with independent testing at public expense. The Hearing Officer
found that the student was the prevailing party and entitled to compensatory
educational services.
Abuse and Neglect
The
mental health staff worked tirelessly over the last two years to bring
improvements to a juvenile residential treatment facility in Southeastern
Arizona. Allegations of physical abuse, treatment failures, seclusion and
restraint violations, as well as violations of federal accessibility laws were
just a few of the many problems that led the Center to conduct our own
investigation into the policies and practices of this facility. State
regulators had been monitoring this facility for several years but despite
reoccurring violations of personal rights and liberties, regulators failed bring
about any changes to the facility. The Center intervened, conducted an
investigation, released our own findings, and was able to convince state
regulators to stiffen the penalties assessed against this facility. The
state suspended admissions for all new patients directly supported by state
funds pending the corrections of the deficiencies and the local regional
behavioral health agency, Community Partnership of Southern Arizona, followed
suit. With new admissions halted, the facility was forced to change their
policies and practices. Center staff conducted a follow-up site visit
recently and were pleased to find substantial improvements, including major
changes at the local management level.
Tentative Settlement Reached in Tucson
Paratransit Lawsuit
The
Center filed a class action lawsuit in federal court regarding the City of
Tucson's violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act's paratransit
requirements. The law requires public entities who operate a fixed route
system to provide paratransit to individuals with disabilities that is
comparable to the level of service provided to individuals without disabilities
who use the fixed route system. In Tucson, the fixed route system is
operated by Sun Tran and the paratransit system is operated by Van Tran.
The
lawsuit alleges that the City is violating the ADA by: 1) denying approximately
14,000 requests for paratransit rides each year; 2) denying requests for
next-day paratransit service; 3) picking up paratransit riders significantly too
early or too late on a substantial number of occasions; 4) providing a
substantial number of paratransit rides with excessive trip lengths; and 5)
refusing to schedule paratransit rides at the time of request. Center
staff and City representatives made great strides in rectifying the problems and
moving to create a system where persons with disabilities who rely on
paratransit services to get to the doctor, to work or to shop will have adequate
services. I am happy to report that we have reached a tentative settlement
in this case and are awaiting the scheduling of a fairness hearing so that the
federal court may review and approve the terms of the settlement.
Upcoming Trainings
The
Center has posted our second quarter trainings on our web site. Please
visit http://www.acdl.com/training.html
for the complete list. Below is a sample of our many upcoming
trainings. Please be sure to contact the Center to reserve your space if
you are interested in attending any of these events.
April Highlights
How to Take Steps to Fight Disability
Discrimination at Work
Thursday April 21, 2005
12:00 pm -2:00 p.m.
3839 N. Third Street, Suite 209
Phoenix, Arizona 85012
(Staff attorney answers your questions about
the informal and formal steps to try and correct a problem of discrimination.
The discussion will include negotiation with employers, how to file a complaint
of discrimination and understand the investigation process of the EEOC and
Attorney General's office and lawsuits)
Contact: Anabel Reyes, (520) 327-9547 or
outside of Tucson, 1-800-922-1447
email: areyes@acdl.com
*This training is subject to cancellation
unless a minimum of 5 people sign up for the training. Please call to confirm
the business day before the training. Free pizza provided.
Special Education Training for Parents
(Spanish)
Monday April 25, 2005
10:00 am 12:00 p.m.
Southeastern Arizona Behavior Health
Services
(SEABHS)
32 Blvd. Del Rey David
Nogales, Arizona
Contact: Claudia (520) 281-9189
*This training is subject to cancellation
unless a minimum of 4 people register for the training.
May Highlights
Your Rights as a Vocational
Rehabilitation Client
Monday May 16, 2005
4:00 to 6:00 p.m.
100 N. Stone Avenue, Suite 305
Tucson, Arizona 85701
Contact: Anabel Reyes, (520) 327-9547 or
outside of Tucson, 1-800-922-1447
email: areyes@acdl.com
*This training is subject to cancellation unless a minimum of 5 people register
for the training.
June Highlights
Protection and Advocacy for People with
Disabilities in Arizona
Wednesday June 1, 2005
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
CPSA Training Center
2502 N. Dodge Blvd.
Tucson, Arizona
RSVP by calling the CPSA Training Line at
(520) 318-6950 ext. 3000
Or contact: Claudia Sandoval at (520)
327-9547,
outside of Tucson 1800-922-1447, email: csandoval@acdl.com
This training will provide an overview of
the services and mandates of the Arizona Center for Disability Law. The
presentation will focus primarily on mental health advocacy.
An Overview of the IDEA Act of 2004
Friday, June 24, 2005, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00
p.m.
Flagstaff Medical Center / McGee Auditorium
1200 N. Beaver Street
Flagstaff, Arizona
Contact: (602) 2746287 or
outside of Phoenix, 18009272260
email: riacovelli@acdl.com
* Space is limited and advanced
registration is required.
Leslie J. Cohen
Executive Director
Arizona Center for Disability Law
April 2005