CHARLENE D'CRUZ: Hello, everyone. This is Charlene D'Cruz and I'm with a project for the lawyers with the government. I'm on the border in Brownsville, Texas. I'm going to say that I'm supposed to be facilitating or helping facilitate this session. Please forgive me because I didn't have all of the parameters in how this was going to work. Nevertheless, I thought we could start the conversation on how — where we are at and where things could go with disability law. I have a particular experience in immigration but I also have some experience in disability law.
I am a little bit at a loss because I'm not sure how to proceed in this session. But if anybody has any thoughts that they would like to talk about in public policy, I think there is a lot of public policy necessary in the field of disability law and immigration to recognize the need of immigrants, especially immigrant children, immigrants who are in detention and asylum seekers.
If anybody wanted to jump on and continue the conversation or ask any questions, I'm happy to facilitate.
There is some discussion here on the ADA. Steven McFadden, do you want to take the floor and start off that conversation?
It is just that there are about 69 documents that the Trump Administration rescinded on a number of things. And that included about a dozen on the ADA and some on immigrant rights and so forth.
Some of these were like guidance from how do you negotiate things with the ADA and so forth. So these were thought to be law making by regulation and the Trump Administration didn't like that. But some of these say things that are highly useful when you're negotiating with companies over the ADA. It would be useful to get those reinstated as guidance to the extent that they're useful. I put into chat the links to the list of documents that were rescinded. Some of them I've seen on the internet in a document cloud somewhere. If I can find where those documents are, I'll paste those links. If you want guidance on how to get things done, that would be useful in this era.
CHARLENE D'CRUZ: Thank you, Stephen. I got a great suggestion that it would be nice if we could all introduce ourselves. I just introduced myself. Stephen, I'm going to put you on the floor again to kick off introducing yourself and then if everybody can hop on and introduce themselves. Thank you.
I'm Steve McFadden and I'm an activist on chemical injury and chemical sensitivity issues. Not a lawyer. But had to learn about the ADA as a survival skill.
I can go next. This is Ken Walden. I'm the managing attorney for access living of metropolitan Chicago which is a center for independent living. One of the few centers for independent living in the country that has attorneys on staff. And we mostly do ADA enforcement work and fair housing act enforcement work on behalf of people with disabilities.
My name is Victor Panoff and I am with disability rights Florida, the advocacy agency for the state of Florida.
Hi. I can go next. My name is an officer at the charitable trust and I'm an attorney and I work on a project that's focused on access to civil justice, specifically access to civil courts and court modernization. And also host a podcast called down to the struts about disability design and intersectionality. Nice to meet everyone.
This is TL. I'm cofacilitating today. In terms of access, it would be nice if following the comment in the chat that everyone who hasn't introduced themselves yet, turn your videos on now, if you would like. Charlene, you can stay on. And that would make it easier for access. And then Charlene, if you could go through and call the people and then just leave your video on until the time at which all of the introductions are done and then we'll turn them off.
CHARLENE D'CRUZ: Thank you. I've never done this before. I'm going to call on Shira Gordon.
Hi. I'm a trial attorney at HUD, Department of Housing & Urban Development. I'm in D.C. I work on fair housing compliance, subsection 504 and the ADA as well as title VI. We do investigations and work on policy issues. To Steven's point, I know the DOJ just reposted a title VI legal manual so they may be starting to repost documents that they think are still valid but I'm not sure about the ADA documents you were talking about.
CHARLENE D'CRUZ: Kevin Williams.
Hi. I'm Kevin Williams, the legal program director for the Colorado cross disability coalition. A position I've held for about 24 years. And we — I work inside the nonprofit organization. We're a small legal program with two attorneys, one legal program assistant. We handle mostly title II and title III cases of all shapes and sizes. We do some fair housing act work and we also have the state law that we enforce. So we don't do a lot of employment but just about everything else in the field. Nice to meet everybody.
CHARLENE D'CRUZ: Kevin. Nancy?
I cut off my name. I put my phone down. My name is Nancy Mayer out of Carolina and I deal with ADA accommodations, disability issues with respect to retirement and at work. And that's most of what I do as an attorney for the disability world. I also do elder law and probate. Things that don't have a whole lot to do with it.
My name is Tauna. My pronouns are she/her. I'm the legal director of relatively new national nonprofit civil rights organization called CommunicationFIRST. And we are dedicated to the five million people in this country who cannot rely on speech to be understood.
Our work largely is focused on ADA but we work in many domains. Education, hospitals, health care settings, community living, we have a long agenda. Many things to accomplish. Nice to meet you all.
CHARLENE D'CRUZ: Thank you, Tauna. Is there somebody else I'm missing? I don't see anybody else on the list. Do you, Talila?
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL.
CHARLENE D'CRUZ: Sorry, Zainab. I didn't see you.
I'm Zainab. I'm a policy counsel for the National Association for the Deaf. I do regulatory work for the NAD that focuses on telecommunication, employment, technology and the like. It is nice to meet everybody.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. I don't know how many facilitators are here. We kind of got emails asking us to be co-facilitaters. I think Jennifer Mathis was invited but I'm not sure if she'll join. So I think — Ken, are you one of the co-facilitaters?
No.
TALILA LEWIS: Okay. Great. So just in terms of access, I think we will — we didn't get any instructions but this session is about public policy and networking around that. So I think maybe one of — I was specifically invited to talk about incarceration and disability in the criminal legal system. And I think Charlene was invited to talk about immigration, disability, they're all related. I wonder if there are any specific topics or areas of law which folks want us to maybe just kind of kick off the conversation or if you have particular things you're interested in talking about? Maybe that's the best way to go about it. Go ahead. And one point of access, before you sign or speak, we just ask that you make sure that you say or sign your name so everyone knows who's commenting at any given moment. Thank you.
This is Ken Walden. I was hoping there might be time to talk about housing policy on the federal level.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. Thanks. We'll make a note of that. Are there any other particular topics folks are interested in? You can use the chat or sign or speak.
TALILA LEWIS: If you could share, maybe you can start, say your name and the topic. You're introducing a topic here.
I was Shira. Ken is interested in housing policy. Since I work on that, I was curious to hear what some ideas he had were. One thing I'm curious about is issues of affirmative marketing? Are people being advertised to? Do people feel like they have the option to move into different types of living situations or do they feel like they're either — they don't know about other opportunities or they think they're going to be excluded from opportunities — they don't apply to certain types of housing or certain areas, that kind of thing?
Hi. This is Qudsiya. I work in an organization and my focus isn't necessarily explicitly on disability and accessibility in the civil legal system but I want to ensure that those issues of access are infused into the work of my project and so I would love some advice and insights that folks might have about how to bring those ideas and what central partnerships I might consider. In the course of that, I'm happy to later on, if we get to this topic, explain a little bit more about what the project is about to provide some color to that.
TALILA LEWIS: Can you offer some points of clarification?
I'm back.
TALILA LEWIS: Thank you. You said access as related to what specifically? I may have missed something.
Sure. My project is focused on creating better access to the civil legal system for particularly for people who use the civil legal system without a lawyer which is most people because unlike the criminal legal system, there is no right to counsel in the civil legal system. So we're working on a bunch of different types of solutions. Some of them include technology solutions. Some of them include providing better access to legal information and others include policy reform that would make the process less opaque for self represented litigants. I think that disability and access is a huge part of that conversation. So for example I've been working on helping courts implement some new technologies and making sure that those technologies are accessible. So I'm interested in advice about whether that's organizations I should be talking to or partnering with or getting advice from or things I should be considering in that policy and technical assistance work with the courts. Is that helpful?
This is Ken Walden. Are you working on the right to counsel in eviction cases?
So we're — there is a lot of really great work being done on right to counsel. We're sort of focused on more — for a lot of different cases including evictions, family law matters, often parties are going to court wrought a lawyer. In the absence of being able to provide every single person with a lawyer in the civil system, we're trying to focus on how to make the system better and more accessible for self represented litigants, people who don't have a lawyer.
This is Ken again. Do you want our videos off if we're not speaking?
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. I think one of the requests is that if you're going to have your video on, just leave it on. When people keep turning videos on and off, it gets a little confusing. So for people who would like to leave it on, that's fine. For people who are working with the interpreters, we'll probably be in a different view. But it would be ideal if we don't just turn them on and off because it gets really confusing so whatever you're comfortable with as long as you leave it. Thank you for asking. I see Tauna.
I wanted to respond to the last comment about access to civil proceedings. This is something we have to deal with a lot with our population who frequently is denied the opportunity to testify on their own behalf because of assumptions about capacity and that type of thing. It is a project on our long agenda but it is one that comes up frequently and I would like to speak with you offline about that.
Great.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. The interpreters are going to switch. I just want to remind folks that Tauna, who was just on actually represents folks who are deaf, deaf disabled, who maybe don't speak, who use other forms of communication as opposed to spoken language. Is that correct, Tauna, just to give folks background and a reminder as to where you're coming from.
We represent people who cannot rely on speech to be understood. There are different ways of shorthands of that. But they're all problematic in various ways to different people. We prefer to use the long description. We aren't opposed to representing deaf and deaf blind folks but our niche is really this subsection of folks whose primary disability is speech related in part because there is no other organization focused on that group and there are many organizations already doing amazing work for deaf and deaf blind people. But we have done hospital visitation, policy COVID related stuff, representing people who are hard of hearing, for instance, because of a communication issue. So we're not opposed to it. We just aren't holding ourselves out as representing them because we're not experts but we've collaborated with NAD.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. Thank you for clarifying that. Should we start then — it seems like there is a small consensus — only 17 of us here. But on housing issues at the federal level? I think people were interested in understanding a bit more of what you were curious in sharing or learning about or discussing today. Do you mind expanding on what you're interested in, Ken? Go ahead.
This is Ken. This is Ken Walden. I think you're addressing the question to me. There's a lot to talk about but I'll start with two things. The new administration has a hope for a goal to have universal housing choice vouchers available to people.
As probably everybody on this call knows, there is a dramatic shortage of affordable integrated housing for people across the country. The mismatch between the need and the supply is dramatic. One of the tools the federal government has are what are called housing choice vouchers which act as a movable or portable coupon that you get and you can take it to housing provider in private housing and you essentially pay 30% of your own income toward rent and the federal government picks up the rest.
For people with low incomes, it is a golden ticket to be able to have one of these because it allows you to basically afford a place to live. But so many people who are poor and certainly among those are lots and lots and lots of people with disabilities, struggle to find affordable, accessible housing. The Biden Administration has a goal to issue universal vouchers to make those more widely available to people with low incomes which will involve a lot of expense to do so.
In terms of disability issues, we know that if the federal government moves in that direction, that for people with disabilities who need accessible housing, they're going to need funding to help modify homes to make them accessible under the fair housing ability called a reasonable modification. It might be modifying bathrooms, front entrances, kitchens. But without modification funding, a voucher is not going to be necessarily a golden ticket because you may find a place but it is not accessible. That's one issue. Funding to complement housing choice vouchers.
The second choice is exception rents which would enable people with disabilities who need accessible housing to get approved for higher rent amounts than they might otherwise be approved for because most accessible housing is in newer developments which are essentially more expensive. So if you're limited to the supply of housing that your voucher would normally get you, you can't afford the more expensive places. I don't know if people is working with that. Modification funding and exception rents to basically complement the issuance of housing choice vouchers and now I'll be quiet. Thanks for listening.
This is Shira. This is something of interest to me. In addition to the rents, part of HUD's regulations 8.28 talks about for housing voice vouchers that the public housing authority should work with the family to help them find an accessible unit which I think can be difficult. A question of interpreting that more broadly. A voluntary compliance agreement I worked on in Prince George's County, Maryland, the disability rights Maryland had a parallel case or case before us and their settlement agreement included a modification fund for housing choice vouchers. So I think even if it's not currently part of federal law, there may be efforts to create funds like that that can help modify units for people with vouchers.
This is Ken again. In order to complement the housing choice vouchers, there ought to be kind of a national modification fund which today I don't think exists. Some house authorities have funding. Some localities have funding. Some private foundations have funding for modifications. Some departments have rehabilitation. But a national modification fund would be an awesome policy improvement so to speak.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. I have a question following up for Shira. Something that you opened up saying was regarding whether or not folks actually have options. Can you expand a little bit more on what you were meaning by that.
The affirmative fair housing market requirements that if properties get either federal mortgage financing, whatever the right term is or if they got federal subsidies, they're supposed to market their properties throughout a housing market area. A lot of time the focus is on race and ethnic minorities but it also applies to people with disabilities. So that's one project I'm curious about. Are there ways to improve that?
Some of it is — if someone is advertising or marketing contacting community organizations or some of it might be advertising that they — properties have accessible units or that kind of thing. But it is kind of an obscure issue. If people have ideas on how to improve that.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. I think in the beyond burgeoning gentrifying market across the nation, it is a relevant topic and I wonder if other people have noticed what is or is not going on in relation to that. Is anybody else on the call who is interested in sharing a bit more about that?
It sounds like from the quiet this requires a bit more investigation and collaboration across disability to figure out what is or is not going on there. Thank you for raising that and flagging it as something that we should be concerned about and paying attention to.
I want to shift us now to the issue of access to the civil legal system. Maybe Qudsiya do you mind sharing things about the project you're working on and things we could share with you that might be of assistance? Go ahead.
Thanks, TL. As I was mentioning earlier, my project is a newerish project at the pew charitable trust called the modernization project. And our objective is to modernize the civil legal system so the idea is that the system was designed by and for lawyers but the vast majority — three in four civil court cases, according to relatively recent data involve at least one party who is unrepresented, who does not have a lawyer. So we're working on different types of technological policy and practice reforms to make the system more accessible and easier to navigate for people without a lawyer. So I'll give you an example of a project I'm working on most recently.
It is a new technology called online dispute resolution which allows parties to "A," synchronously communicate using an online platform to resolve a dispute without having to set foot in a courtroom. And I think there are certain advantages to this technology, particularly for disabled people. But this technology can also oppose a lot of barriers. We've seen this with the proliferation of technologies like electronic filing, Zoom hearings that have come up during the pandemic when the courts had to shut their doors at the start of the pandemic. And continue to not be operating in person fully or at all.
As a blind person myself, I discovered that many of them are not screen reader accessible. And so a lot of these civil courts, in addition to obligations under state law to uphold disability laws and policies and to ensure that any processes they change or modify or modernize are accessible to disabled people are not necessarily doing so. So we're working — with one state that was implementing their own self designed online dispute resolution system, we were able to provide them with some resources to actually test for accessibility and improve the accessibility of their platform.
So that's just an example of an intervention we've been working on. So in this work, we really want to make sure that all of the policy reform efforts, the technology solutions that we're working with courts to develop always consider access for disabled people and I think the issue of people who don't use speech to communicate is something new and haven't thought of and what barriers can arise for people in the civil legal system who identify that way, having to navigate it. I definitely want to talk more about things to consider when it comes to design and policy change.
But I just wanted to get people's thoughts about other organizations that might be interested in these issues that we should be talking to that look at them from a disability law, disability rights, disability justice lens. And just other types of access issues that anyone has observed in their work in the housing space or other legal space that we should be thinking about when we're doing this work.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. That's very helpful. Thank you for sharing and expanding on that. I have some thoughts but I'm going to pause because I'm facilitating and I'm wonder if any of the folks who haven't shared yet want to respond to any piece of that. And then if not, then we'll move to the folks who have shared. Any of the quieter folks would like to respond to that?
I'll invite folks to respond especially around the access pieces. I heard something come up that was related to folks who struggle with speech or folks who don't use speech to communicate. I wonder if anybody Zainab or Tauna had anything to share about that particular aspect of it. I see that Tauna has turned her video on. Go ahead.
In the example I mentioned earlier, one is really just getting in the door and being allowed to testify in any capacity on their own behalf as a plaintiff or as a defendant or something like that.
Most people who can't rely on speech to be understood are assumed to have a significant intellectual disability to the point they can't understand or use language when we know that speech and language are different parts of the brain and there's no anatomical basis to assume that someone who can't speech can't use language.
But that said, most of our community has not been provided with access to robust augmentative and alternative communication tools. So there's the basic sort of question of if that person has never been provided with access to AAC which is the shorthand for augmentative communication, then how would they potentially communicate as a victim or witness or litigant in a civil proceeding. This comes up often in family law cases as well. And sometimes as witnesses and sort of sexual abuse issues and noncriminal settings and that sort of thing. Oftentimes the witnesses and victims are challenged by the defendant or — I'm soft mixing civil and criminal here. It comes up in all of these cases where the question is this person qualified to testify at all.
Obviously this is a concept — I don't know if you were familiar with this term from other countries. New thing in the U.S. but the concept of an intervener in court settings, I guess is someone who's been assigned to sort of support someone that's often used in mental health cases as well. That's not really a thing that's been used in the U.S. very much. But that's something that we're sort of looking at for whether that's a potential not solution but way to navigate some of these issues.
I know under the U.N. CRPD rubric, there's a lot of discussion about those concepts. And then basic things like who pays for interpreters. I know the deaf community has dealt with that forever and has made good progress and inroads there. But one of our board members not too long ago, visited the U.S. Supreme Court pre-pandemic and she uses an iPad to communicate, a speech generating device and couldn't enter the main courtroom — was barred from that. There are so many ways to get at this and so many issues.
Many different issues here.
We're working on different projects around minor guardianship. This is important to consider in our — as we're studying policies in states. Thank you for sharing that.
Adult guardianship is a big issue. They rarely have input on whether they want it or need it.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. I want to uplift a comment from Charlene. Access issues are big in immigration court, immigration hearings and interviews. Very big issue for immigrants in detention. Charlene, did you want to add anything to that? Go ahead.
CHARLENE D'CRUZ: Yeah, thank you. So we've been struggling with access in immigration courts and interviews, access issues for years. I put in the chat before, New York — the state of New York is the first state to acknowledge that immigrants have a right to counsel in immigration court. That was a big step. But no other states have really followed suit. And I think that's a huge issue when it comes to access, especially for people with disabilities.
I used to do house law many, many years ago. And oftentimes it was really hard to have — with access issues in hearings and in housing court but that's come a long way. Immigration court seems to be stuck. They need — we need to have better access. We talked in another session an hour ago about not just disability rights but third language speakers or indigenous speakers where it is really hard to get those specific interpreters. But I think access issues go beyond interpretation.
This is Quds, IYA. Unfortunately the work with Pew is from state courts. That being said, I come from an immigration background. I was briefly a practitioner and then at the Vera institute of justice working on their unaccompanied children's program and other programs related to access to counsel for immigrants both in ICE custody. So these issues are important to me and I've seen firsthand in observing immigration court some of the things you're describing. I was in the previous session and shared my contact details. I'm look forward to outside of my role at Pew, working on those issues with you. I think a lot of the things that we're learning in the state civil courts can apply in the immigration court system. And I think there are a lot of issues for people who are applying for benefits as well. I've had some conversations with folks from the American immigration lawyers association and others on this. So I think this is another — in addition to the issues we talked about in that session, I think the issue of just sheer access to the courts, I think that the issue Tauna was describing about not being able to bring your iPad into the courthouse because you need it to communicate, those materialize in the immigration court system as well. I want to keep in conversation with those issues as well.
CHARLENE D'CRUZ: That's great. One thing I wanted to point out, a practice point. When we were in tent court on the border, they were using teleconferencing. The judges would come in on videoconferencing. The trial attorney would come in videoconferencing. But they did not allow the attorneys for the asylum seeker to teleconference in. We had to either be in the court that had jurisdiction over that court which, in my case was Harlingen, Texas, or be physically in the court. Here we have the technology and we were able to maybe get interpreters or attorneys. We do federal law. That means anybody from any state can represent the asylum seekers which is way more expensive than state law and yet we couldn't do that.
So I think the push has to be both on — I understand your project is mostly state but it has to be some look to the state of how we're dealing with these issues in civil state proceedings to say to federal — and especially now with COVID, we have now been elevated to a whole new level of communicating. Here we are all on Zoom. There's no reason we can't have this be an immigration court, right? But yet we have those access issues. I'm very interested in working with you and anybody else who may have questions or any interest in access issues.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. Thank you, all for this dialogue. In terms of what I wanted to offer in terms of perspective, I guess it is a challenge for attorneys especially to really look at the ways in which both the criminal legal system and the civil legal system and the attendants to those, the immigration system, how they actually work to further marginalize and subjugate all marginalized people. And how sometimes when we invest more resources into them, we unintentionally cause more harm. And finding really creative ways to actually invest in things like participatory defense, for example and not contributing to the expansion of particular systems including, unfortunately, our legal system, even if we're talking about on the criminal side. I know that might sound a little radical or revolutionary to people. It really is not. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said during his last years alive on this Earth "I fear that I've integrated my people into a burning house." So it is important that we understand that there is a very clear distinction between disability rights and disability justice and that disability justice really goes about approaching issues of access and justice in a way that disability rights can never. And that's not to say that we do away with disability rights. Obviously we want to utilize them in the spaces and places and for whom they are of benefit. And it is acknowledging even with the best investment in the civil legal system reform or what have you, it is still going to continue to obfuscate things like white supremacy, abled supremacy, our spoken language supremacy. I want to offer a challenge to folks to really be thinking critically and be in conversation and community with folks who are most affected by all of these systems.
And responding to the one thing about Zoom and utilizing Zoom, I think it is important that a lot of folks can't use Zoom for a myriad of reasons. Disable and not disabled. It is important to acknowledge that. I talked during the last session with a few folks that are here about access theatre. I have a chapter that's coming out in Gallaudet Press in May. I talk about how these ideas about the provision of access and reform make it harder for us to achieve true justice in liberation. I want to offer that — I don't want to say a counterperspective but a deeper perspective from which I hope that some of us can think about the work that we're doing and not further perpetuate some of these harms. Go ahead. This is TL. I heard — it sounded like somebody was trying to come on.
This is Qudsiya. I appreciate what you said and it is important to think outside the box. In the project I'm working on, one of the things we're trying to push is that part of the reform is to get a lot of matters out of the courts so that it isn't the locust of the problem solving that's occurring in someone's life and we're catching stuff at an earlier stage. So why do people end up in eviction because we have a massive crisis in terms of who gets access to housing and how and when. So I really appreciate that point and it is a really good thing to remember, especially when we're sort of stuck inside of these paradigms that can be really difficult to shake.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. I would love to be in conversation with you about the other things. I love that you uplifted that material support for the most marginalized and perpetually deprived like intentionally made precarious people i.e. black, disabled, incarcerated folks as a creation of the same government that we're then going to attempt to remedy that when quite literally, a lot of the resources, instead of funneling them into the reforms, can be going into mutual aid and other things of that nature.
So especially if you're in a position of power where you have access to a lot of money and resources, a foundation, philanthropy, trusts, we should be really thinking about how to be creative in our strategizing around that. I appreciate that your team is already moving in that direction and that's really wonderful. I want to uplift a comment in the chat from Tauna that says I use the term "intervener" when I meant to say intermediary. Apology. She provided more information to find info on justice intermediaries. It is www.justiceintermedrary.org.
Were there other things that folks wanted to discuss, Charlene?
CHARLENE D'CRUZ: It looks like we went through the list that you had made a little while ago.
This is not my field but I'm interested to find out from people like Ken and Shira what's being done with, for example, the vouchers or what did you call it? Modification funding when it comes to Native Americans or American Indians. I don't know how separate that is, especially in HUD, I know there's Indian housing. I'm just interested. I live very close to Indian reservations and in my own life, I did housing law.
This is Shira. I'm not sure. I'm not working directly on the issue of expanding vouchers although I think it is a great initiative. I think there is more funding for vouchers. I'm not sure how vouchers are distributed between the Indian housing program and other public housing programs. Section 504 does apply to Native American tribes as well. And so those same programs which again I think so far have been much more based on a specific investigation or more locality based. But if they were more part of a national program, it could apply to reservations or to tribes.
Charlene, this is Ken. I don't know the answer either. It is a great question. I just don't know. I would say this, in terms of the issues listed in the chat, I don't know that we resolved the question that Steve McFadden raised. I think it is because maybe we don't know the answer. What is happening with all of the regulations that were related to civil rights, disability rights and the like that were, in theory, rescinded during the last administration and then are they being brought back? What's the process? Are people talking about that? I just don't know that anyone on the call seems to know, Steve. I think that's maybe the problem. At the moment.
Maybe we can kick it to some of the agencies and they can reconsider and see if there is a better version and get it rein stated if it is useful guidance. Some of these are helpful to employers or people seeking accommodation because it says here's how you do it.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. I think I missed a little bit of what you shared because I had some tech issues earlier but we're early in this administration. We do have some allies. I think it is worth folks reaching out to the folks that we know to find out what action is being taken. I know my organization and some others just met with the new commissioner, the interim commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission. So I think we can individually engage in some of this one on one conversations and maybe pushing folks who we know who are in positions of some authority to see if we can get some of that — some of our laws back on the books that are of benefit to us.
CHARLENE D'CRUZ: Stephen, this is Charlene. I'm looking at your list and I see that you have the refugees and the right to work. One of the things we looked at in immigration law with all of those rules that they were trying to ram in at the last minute, many of those were stayed through TROs in various litigation — piece of litigation that was going on. There are a couple that are still out there. But it is going to take us having to go back and do rulemaking to undo the rule. A lot of immigration policy was done via executive order. Those are much easier to roll back although they haven't all been rolled back.
But with the regs that are hitting us from December to January that we were just getting reamed by it, those are going to have to go back through rulemaking which will take from six months to a year and those are going to be devastating. But I know that, for example, the right to work, there's been various issues with work issues and work permit issues when it came to refugees and asylees and some part of that was taken care of by a large class action suit that was — versus wolf and the Rosario case that was brought three or four years ago. We really do need to see how to clean up by trying to utilize any friendly person in the administration at this point because who knows what's going to happen in three and a half years.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. I added in the chat there are some upcoming notices of proposed rulemaking coming out of the FCC and I'm sure our regulatory agencies, there are things underway and at least we can get comments on the record about what the issues are.
Related to what Charlene just mentioned, I guess we should end on this note where I remind folks there is massive voter suppression being engaged in still and of course it is only being ratcheted up in the wake of all that has occurred in the past several years. So we should also be engaged in cross movement advocacy around stopping voter disenfranchisement on all accounts, right? Criminal record, proof of residency, proof of all of these things. All of those are actually anti disability in ways that often don't get acknowledged. So I want to challenge us around that as well to be engaged and to be in solidarity with all movements for social justice as we work to somehow push back against the outright disenfranchisement that continues to occur.
People put their email addresses in the chat and we can email links to these documents.
TALILA LEWIS: This is TL. I think we have about three minutes left. If anybody wants to share any last comments or anything before we head out. Stephen mentioned that folks can put their email addresses in the chat. We'll leave the room open long enough for folks to gain access to that because we won't have direct access to it ourselves. Tauna said thanks for doing such a good job moderating. Thank you, Tauna. We tried our best. Thanks to everybody for being such great sports and participants with us.
I see that people are posting their email addresses.
TALILA LEWIS: We're not in charge of the room. So we'll just leave it open for folks to go ahead and do that because I don't think you can cut and paste from this particular chat, unfortunately.
So I guess if there's nothing else, thanks to the communication access support folks, the interpreter, the caption team. And I think folks can go their separate ways and continue enjoying the remainder of the conference. Just be in contact. Thank you so much.
CHARLENE D'CRUZ: I don't know Zoom. Thank you Talila!
TALILA LEWIS: Everything that's worthwhile is done in community. Thanks everyone for coming together to support with this effort. Thank you. Have a great day, everyone.