In 1974, Larry and Sandi Zobrest welcomed their first child, Jim, in Erie, Pennsylvania. After being diagnosed as profoundly deaf before his first birthday, Jim attended a private preschool for children with disabilities. However, fearing a public school system that lacked necessary accommodations, the family moved to Tucson, Arizona. There, Jim attended the state-operated Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind, where he received a taxpayer-funded sign language interpreter. Seeking further educational improvements, the Zobrests eventually returned to Erie and enrolled Jim in a Roman Catholic school. This dynamic reveals the complex intersection of disability and religion in education, often highlighting underlying systemic biases.
When Jim was enrolled in this private religious school, the local school district denied him the use of a state-funded interpreter, arguing that providing such services would be unlawful at a religious institution. The Zobrest family sued the district, maintaining that denying their son essential assistance based on their religious choices was a violation of his rights. While the federal government protects religious liberty, the case raised questions regarding the Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from preferring one religion over another. This legal battle introduced a significant tension between religious freedom and disability rights in American discourse.
The contest over who would fund Jim’s interpreter lasted six years, eventually reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. During the litigation, Jim graduated from high school, and the focus of the case shifted from disability accommodations to religious freedom in education. Because both parties framed the argument around religious liberty, the Zobrests eventually secured a favorable decision. However, this victory meant that religious liberty took precedence over disability law. This precedent contributed to the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) allowing religious institutions to exempt themselves from certain requirements on the grounds of religious liberty.
The bigger issue, one that often goes unnoticed, is that with the use of religious liberty as a means of exempting themselves from providing federally mandated accommodations for disabled people, religious institutions also effectively distanced themselves from practicing a faith that demands involvement in social justice. If you have ever wondered why there is so much tension in the modern church involving social justice, it is because as soon as the church was able to use religious liberty to opt out of creating a more just world for the disabled, it became easier to continue to fracture the connection between faith and justice. The exemption of the church from the ADA based on religious liberty has had a far greater impact than just providing accommodations for disabled people; it also be- came the platform for many churches and congregations to distance themselves from practicing racial justice.
Content taken from How Ableism Fuels Racism by Lamar Hardwick, ©2024. Used by permission of Brazos Press.