Eve Hill, partner at Brown, Goldstein & Levy, was featured in NowThis and ABC7 News interviews covering her recent federal lawsuit challenging Virginia Governor Youngkin’s Executive Order 2. Youngkin’s order bars schools from requiring students to wear masks and puts students with disabilities, who are more susceptible to severe illness if they contract COVID-19, in serious risk.
In a statement to NowThis, Eve said, “We think that the ADA is really quite clear about this. The ADA does not allow blanket rules. There always has to be a way to make an exception for the student with a disability who needs that exception in order to be included.”
The lawsuit argues that Executive Order 2 violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by essentially excluding students with disabilities from public schools and forcing their parents to make an impossible choice between their children’s education and their health and safety. According to the lawsuit, the Order places unlawful barriers to education access for students with disabilities, ultimately preventing them from being present in public schools. The lawsuit asks for a permanent injunction prohibiting the implementation of Executive Order 2. Find full case information here.
“People keep thinking, ‘Well, why don’t the… students with disabilities just get educated at home?’ And we say the disability community has been seeking integration with everybody else for 50 years, and we are not going back.”
These parents say VA Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order getting rid of school mask mandates puts their vulnerable kids at risk — here’s why
(with @TashaNelson39, @teachkjg, and @evelhill) pic.twitter.com/I4ejPmOWxV
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) February 9, 2022
The lawsuit was filed alongside the ACLU of Virginia, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee, the disAbility Law Center of Virginia and Arnold & Porter, on behalf of parents of 12 students with disabilities in Virginia’s public schools.