Brown, Goldstein & Levy partner Lindsey Weinstock recently spoke to NBC News about the consequences of the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back decades of federal disability rights law and enforcement in an investigation examining the intersection of the administration’s homelessness policies and longstanding protections for people with disabilities.
In June 2026, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a sweeping memo arguing that protections established under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act do not require states to provide services to people with disabilities in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs – in direct opposition to protections established under Olmstead v. L.C., the landmark Supreme Court decision establishing that the unjustified segregation of people with disabilities constitutes discrimination under the ADA. For decades, Olmstead has been central to advancing the right of people with disabilities to receive services in their communities rather than face unnecessary institutionalization.
Lindsey joined BGL from the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, where she worked to enforce the integration mandate of Title II of the ADA for more than a decade. While at the DOJ, Lindsey served as lead trial counsel in litigation challenging Florida’s unnecessary institutionalization of children with complex medical needs. During a two-week bench trial, she helped prove that Florida was unnecessarily institutionalizing hundreds of children with disabilities in nursing homes and placing hundreds more at serious risk of similar segregation. In the wake of its June memo, the DOJ is now asking the appeals court to overturn its own victory.
Lindsey told NBC that when she left the DOJ, she suspected the administration would scale back Olmstead work, but she did not expect a reversal this sweeping. The stakes, she said, go well beyond Florida. The way states administer disability services can mean the difference between being “siphoned away for life into an institution” and getting “to grow up with your family,” Lindsey continued.
Read the full investigation here.
ABOUT LINDSEY WEINSTOCK
Lindsey Weinstock joined Brown, Goldstein & Levy in 2025 from the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, where, over more than a decade of service, she became a trusted source of both litigation expertise and technical and policy knowledge in the area of health care. With deep experience in investigations, complex civil litigation, settlement negotiations, and monitoring compliance with injunctions and consent decrees, Lindsey brings vision and creativity, along with meticulousness and experience-based judgment, to advising clients and vindicating their rights. An experienced and successful litigator, Lindsey led and participated in some of the Civil Rights Division’s largest and most complex cases in federal courts across the country. Her leadership and strategic acumen made her a sought-after asset in training and advising attorneys across the Department on litigation and trial skills and strategy. Learn more about Lindsey here.
ABOUT BROWN, GOLDSTEIN & LEVY
Founded in 1982, Brown, Goldstein & Levy is a law firm based in Baltimore, Maryland, with an office in Washington, D.C. The firm is nationally recognized in a wide variety of practice areas, including complex civil and commercial litigation, civil rights, health care, family law, criminal defense, and appellate advocacy. Above all else, Brown, Goldstein & Levy is a client-centered law firm that brings decades of experience and passionate, effective advocacy to your fight for justice.