Lois Curtis was the plaintiff in a civil rights case that gave folks with disabilities and older folks the suitable to dwell exterior of establishments and in their very own houses. Curtis died Thursday of most cancers.

John Poole/NPR

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John Poole/NPR

Lois Curtis was the plaintiff in a civil rights case that gave folks with disabilities and older folks the suitable to dwell exterior of establishments and in their very own houses. Curtis died Thursday of most cancers.

John Poole/NPR

Attorney Sue Jamieson was touring a grim state hospital in Georgia three a long time in the past when she was launched to a younger girl, Lois Curtis, who’d spent a lot of her teen years and early 20’s in state establishments.

“As we always say, ‘What is it you think we could do for you? I work at Legal Aid. And I’m a lawyer,'” Jamieson recalled for an oral history for her employer, the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. “And she’d say: ‘Get me out of here. Would you please get me out of here? When am I getting out of here?'”

Curtis, who had an mental incapacity and was recognized with psychological sickness, stored calling Jamieson from the hospital, asking when she might get out.

The lawsuit that Jamieson filed on behalf of Curtis and one other girl – L.C. v. Olmstead – led to a landmark Supreme Court choice benefitting aged and disabled folks, and in the end helped Curtis transfer out of institutional care and into her own residence.

Curtis, 55, died in her own residence exterior of Atlanta on Thursday. The trigger was pancreatic most cancers.

The Supreme Court dominated in 1999, in a decision delivered by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that Curtis, her co-plaintiff Elaine Wilson and different folks with disabilities had a proper—below the Americans with Disabilities Act—to dwell in a “less restrictive setting.”

The landmark civil rights case gave disabled and aged folks a proper to hunt long-term care companies in their very own dwelling, as an alternative of in an establishment like a nursing dwelling or a psychiatric hospital.

Curtis “created a sea change in what our service systems look like,” says Alison Barkoff, the highest federal official for getting old and incapacity coverage.

“We went from a system in 1999 that the only places that most people with disabilities and older adults could get services were in institutions like nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals, to systems that are primarily focused on supporting people with services in their own homes,” says Barkoff, the appearing administrator and assistant secretary of getting old on the Administration for Community Living on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

After the Olmstead choice, state Medicaid budgets shifted. Today, more cash goes to pay for care at dwelling. Less authorities funding goes to pay for care in establishments.

Federal legislation makes nursing dwelling care an entitlement for individuals who meet the eligibility necessities for Medicaid. Home-based care, though it’s extra fashionable and have become a proper below the Olmstead choice, just isn’t an entitlement.

As a outcome, there are lengthy ready lists for care at dwelling—at least 700,000 people waiting in some 40 states. But the Olmstead choice requires each state to maneuver towards offering extra of that care at dwelling.

The Olmstead choice is cited in scores of lawsuits to get others out of institutional care. And its use has unfold. The U.S. Department of Justice, within the Obama Administration, utilized the choice’s wording that individuals with disabilities are entitled to dwell within the “less restrictive environment” to sue to finish segregated work applications that pay folks with disabilities a sub-minimum wage. Now mother and father use Olmstead to say their youngsters ought to be in built-in school rooms.

The argument behind the Olmstead choice was that when folks dwell absolutely built-in of their communities, they dwell higher, extra fulfilling lives.

Curtis proved it. She moved right into a sequence of homes, needing assist from a caregiver with issues like cooking, purchasing and different care. And there she found her expertise as an artist—one thing she did not get to develop when she lived in state hospitals.

Curtis made pencil and pastel drawings of animals and flowers. And generally she drew people whose footage she noticed in magazines and books—like a critical Martin Luther King together with his arms crossed or a shirtless, younger Muhammad Ali.

In 2011, she was invited to the White House on the anniversary of the Olmstead choice. She introduced President Barack Obama a framed image she referred to as “Girl in an Orange Dress.” It was one in every of a sequence of self-portraits Curtis did of herself as a younger lady, as a result of she had no images from the years she lived within the state psychiatric hospitals.

Curtis used her art work to satisfy folks, says Lee Sanders, who was first employed to assist Curtis discover work after which turned a buddy. Curtis, Sanders wrote, “created artwork as she lived: Her lines drawn without hesitation, her colors bold and saturated, her images uncomplicated and spirited.”

Curtis was very social and, together with her fast smile, was gifted at making buddies. They purchased her artwork provides and helped her promote her artwork work.

When Curtis died on Thursday, she was surrounded by lots of these buddies.

In a video she made for the National Disability Rights Network in 2020, Curtis mentioned: “My name is Lois Curtis… I’m glad to be free.”