Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund

The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), with offices in Berkeley, California, and Washington, D.C., has been a leading cross-disability civil rights law and policy center since it was established in 1979. DREDF carries out its mission through training, legal assistance, advocacy, policy and legislative development, litigation, and research. DREDF is unique in the disability rights movement in the United States because it was founded and continues to be led by people with disabilities and parents of children with disabilities, and it achieves social change by organizing and training at the grassroots level, crafting and promoting legislation and policy, and defending those policies in the courts.

DREDF identifies economic and social disenfranchisement of people with disabilities as the result of [Page 478]prejudice and discrimination rather than as an inevitable consequence of the physical and mental limitations imposed by disability. This worldview closely aligned DREDF with other civil rights struggles, thus leading to an invitation in 1981 to join the executive committee of the nation's largest coalition of civil rights groups, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).

DREDF plays a central role in articulating the principles of disability rights law and developing and disseminating strategies for groundbreaking disability civil rights legislation and litigation. DREDF is best known for advocating successfully for federal civil rights laws, representing members of Congress and leading disability organizations in amicus curiae briefs in cases argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, and national grassroots training and empowerment for thousands of parents of children with disabilities and adults with disabilities.

DREDF laid the groundwork for enactment of the landmark 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by preserving and advancing its predecessor law, Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act when it came under attack by the Reagan administration and in the courts in the early 1980s. Similarly, DREDF organized to preserve regulations implementing the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. DREDF is also credited with playing leading roles in the passage of the ADA and other groundbreaking laws such as the Handicapped Children's Protection Act of 1986, the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, and the IDEA Amendments Act of 1997.

In 1987, DREDF established the Disability Rights Clinical Legal Education Program and began teaching disability rights law at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law and supervising law students in the practice of law. DREDF litigation seeks not only to enforce existing laws but also to clarify and advance disability rights through the pursuit of law reform cases, such as by filing the first fullinclusion special education case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, Holland v. Sacramento City Unified School District (1994).

Since 1990, DREDF has worked internationally in 17 countries with advocates who seek assistance in the development of law and policy reform strategies. Ongoing future challenges include restoring, sustaining, and preserving the ADA from further erosion in the courts, and meaningful enforcement of IDEA. As DREDF works in coalition with racial, economic, and environmental justice groups, future challenges will broaden the reach of DREDF's expertise to key areas such as equitable and accessible health care services.

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