 NCIL Action Alert from NCIL's ADA/Civil Rights Subcommittee: Alito Supreme Court Hearings Next Week!!! NCIL Urges Affiliates to Oppose Nominee Who Poses Serious Threat to ADA, Fair Housing Laws and Olmstead Precedent E-mail daniel@ncil.org to add your organization to our list of disability groups opposing the Alito nomination With hearings on Alito's nomination about to begin, the National Council on Independent Living believes that the time has come for our community to take a stand. Instead of the New Freedom that we've been promised, we have faced the appointment of disability rights foes such as Jeffrey Sutton and William Pryor. Increasingly, we are being confronted with new hurdles to clear in our access to justice. The nomination of Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor as Associate Justice to the US Supreme Court may drastically impact the future of disability rights law for decades to come. One more states' rights judge on the Supreme Court could effectively insulate the states from accountability for compliance with Title II of the ADA. The time has come when we need to make our voices heard clearly!!! Based on a careful evaluation of Judge Alito's 15-year record on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, NCIL's ADA/Civil Rights Subcommittee decided to vigorously oppose his nomination. As a Supreme Court Justice, Alito would pose a grave threat to the ability of individuals with disabilities to enforce their rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, fair housing laws and the Olmstead precedent. In 1999, Alito's ruling in ADAPT v. HUD gave HUD a free pass to fail to enforce fair housing regulations to ensure that public housing authorities provide accessible housing. See NCIL website for more details. Yesterday, NCIL Vice President and PA SILC Executive Director Corey Rowley was one of several organizational leaders who presented 1,145,000 petition signatures in opposition to the Alito nomination. Also, Thomas Earle of Liberty Resources joined with several other disability community leaders in Philadelphia to highlight reasons why disability rights advocates are so worried by the Alito nomination. See NCIL's press release (below and attached) for more on how the disability rights community is making a difference! BUT WE NEED TO DO EVEN MORE. TAKE ACTION: Contact Daniel Davis at Daniel@ncil.org to announce your CIL, SILC, association or other disability rights organization's opposition to the Alito nomination. Please indicate if your organization is national, state or local. So far, eight national and ten state and local disability rights organizations have officially announced their opposition to the Alito nomination. The full list of disability rights organizations that are opposed to (or concerned about) the Alito nomination can be found below and attached. DEADLINE: The window for us to make our voices heard is rapidly closing since the Senate Judiciary Committee could vote on Alito's nomination as early as the week of January 17! So we urge all affiliates who are considering opposing this nomination to take action ASAP!!!! OTHER WAYS TO HELP: Send letters to the editor opposing the Alito nomination to your local and regional newspapers. Be a presence at Alito's nomination hearings. Are you interested in demonstrating the disability community's objections to the Alito nomination by providing a visible presence on Capitol Hill? Are you in the Washington D.C. Area or can you get to D.C. easily? If your answer to these two questions is "YES," please e-mail Daniel Davis ASAP at Daniel@ncil.org. TO LEARN ABOUT OTHER WAYS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, e-mail Daniel@ncil.org. Attachment #1: PRESS RELEASE Contact: Daniel Davis National Council on Independent Living and Pennsylvania Disability Community Mobilize in Opposition to Alito Nomination With hearings on the nomination of Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court only days away, the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL) and Pennsylvania disability rights advocates stepped up their campaign to underscore the serious threat that Judge Alito poses to the civil rights of persons with disabilities and called on Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter to heed the concerns of a million Americans, including many persons with disabilities, who signed petitions opposing the Alito nomination.. At 11 AM yesterday, NCIL Vice President and Pennsylvania Statewide Independent Living Council Executive Director Corey Rowley joined Julian Bond of the NAACP, Lauren Townsend of Pennsylvanians for a Fair and Independent Court and others in delivering 1,145,000 signatures of anti-Alito petitions to Specter's Philadelphia office. Only an hour later, civil rights attorney Thomas Earle, the Executive Director of Liberty Resources, Inc, NCIL's Philadelphia affiliate, joined representatives of the Disabilities Law Project, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania in a forum at the Philadelphia Foundation on the nomination of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, his record on civil rights and its effects on the disability community. In 1999 Judge Alito joined a ruling in ADAPT v. HUD that directly undermined the rights of Pennsylvanians with disabilities to hold the Department of Housing and Urban Development accountable for failure to enforce its own regulations concerning accessible housing for people with disabilities. This devastating decision deprived thousands of persons with disabilities in Pennsylvania and the rest of the Third Circuit of the accessible, affordable housing that they have been promised under the Fair Housing Act Amendments and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Rowley referenced this decision declaring, "Judge Alito should know that rights without remedy are essentially broken promises. His willingness to place additional legal hurdles for persons with disabilities to clear in order to hold their government accountable for fulfilling its promises strongly suggests that he is out of touch with the real world impact that the decisions he makes have on the lives of individuals with disabilities." ATTACHMENT #2: Disability Rights Organizations Opposed to Nomination of Third Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court (updated 1/05/06). National Organizations:
State and Local Organizations:
JOIN THE OPPOSITION TO ALITO:
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