By Lily Alexander | Searchlight New Mexico

New Mexico has done a lot to support the disability community, but further legislation is needed, especially with a federal administration that has shown interest in rolling back some landmark protections, advocates say.

As Disability Pride Month gets underway, the community social worker Kaity Ellis calls “the largest minority group” is looking to the future while reflecting on the past. People with disabilities make up more than 27% of the U.S. adult population, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Ellis, who has cerebral palsy and is legally blind, says she fears for the future of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the 1990 civil rights legislation banning discrimination against people with disabilities, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits such discrimination in programs that receive federal funding, including public schools, colleges and healthcare programs

Losing the protection of those laws “is a real fear of mine, speaking as a person with a disability, because those rights, those laws, give me equal access to being a United States citizen. If those laws go away, I don’t have equal access anymore,” Ellis said.

Concern that the federal government will fail to enforce existing laws or rollback community-based services also motivates Eli Fresquez, a civil rights lawyer and president of the nonprofit Disability Pride New Mexico. 

“So it’s a huge opportunity, I think, for our state to work with our state legislators, our community leaders, our families, so that we can maintain these community-based services and keep families together in their homes,” Fresquez said.

Ellis and other advocates would like to see a state-level accessibility act, universal text-to-911 and widespread closed captioning, priorities along with raising awareness and increasing the visibility of the disability community.

Federal changes

President Donald Trump’s administration withdrew 11 pieces of Americans with Disabilities Act-related guidance last year, including tips for businesses on creating accessible parking lots and fitting rooms. And last month, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel released a memo seeking to reinterpret a landmark Supreme Court ruling that held the unjustified segregation of people with disabilities is discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The 1999 Olmstead v. L.C. ruling instructed states to provide community-based care for people with disabilities as an alternative to institutions. It also served as the basis for a policy called the “integration mandate,” which requires state and local governments to provide services for the disability community in the “most integrated setting appropriate” — people’s homes and communities, not just institutions, according to the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.

The memo argues the integration mandate is a misinterpretation of the ruling. 

“We conclude that Olmstead did not hold that Title II requires maximal integration for patients with mental disabilities receiving state treatment,” the memo reads. “Rather, it held only that a state cannot institutionalize such patients without justification. … What counts as adequate justification remains an open question.”

The impact of the memo is unclear. Although it does not change the law, it indicates the federal government may stop enforcing provisions of Olmstead.

“What that type of dialogue does is reverse,” said Nathan Gomme, executive director of the New Mexico Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. “It goes backwards, and it gives the impression that you can’t succeed. This is fundamentally untrue.”

“Deinstitutionalization of people with disabilities is important,” added Lisa McNiven, a former deputy director of the Governor’s Commission on Disability who is also deaf. “We don’t want to go backward.”

‘Extra protections’

Several states have their own accessibility laws that require more than the federal baseline; New Mexico does not, although the state Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination in employment, housing, credit and public accommodation.

A bill championed by Rep. Kathleen Cates, D-Rio Rancho, would require state agency websites, apps and physical facilities to comply with digital and physical accessibility standards and create an office of accessibility. It would also put all the data regarding ADA violations in one place, Cates said.

The bill made it to the Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s desk during the 2025 legislative session, but she vetoed it, saying it duplicated existing efforts by her administration. 

“The naysayers of the bill … will say, ‘I don’t need to grow government,’ or ‘We’re already doing this,’ ” Cates said. “And so my argument is no, what we are doing is creating the right, the law, that all these places need to be accessible. What we need is a reporting mechanism that is centralized so that our decision-makers can make appropriate decisions.”

Cates plans to bring the bill back next year, and she is hopeful the next governor will support it.

“It’s a way of just adding extra protections when there may be less protections or support at the federal level,” Fresquez said of the bill.

One of Gomme’s priorities has been standardizing text-to-911, which would allow deaf or hard-of-hearing people to more easily get help in an emergency. Such a move would also benefit people who cannot speak aloud during an emergency for safety reasons.

In some areas of the state, apps have a text-to-911 feature, Gomme said, but “that’s not what text-to-911 is.”

“What we’re talking about is every public safety access board is able to receive and communicate, over SMS text, an emergency,” he said.

A statewide emergency dispatch system upgrade was announced in 2025. At the time, officials noted many areas across the state would at some point have access to text-to-911, although it is unclear when that rollout will be complete.

‘Awareness as a starting point’

Making strides on accessibility begins with awareness, Fresquez said.

“There are financial barriers that many people have; there are physical barriers to accessibility in terms of physical facilities,” he said. “But without awareness as a starting point, it’s very difficult to get to those other kinds of barriers.”

Disability Pride New Mexico — where Ellis and Gomme are board members — is preparing for two annual events celebrating the state’s disability community and advocates.

The third annual Disability Pride Parade and Festival in Santa Fe — the first and only of its kind in the state — will bring the community together Saturday with a march and booths on the Plaza. The fourth annual Accessibility Awards on July 30 will honor people, businesses and organizations advancing accessibility and inclusion across the state.

At the beginning of July, members of the disability community gathered at City Hall to raise the Disability Pride flag, which features five diagonal stripes of different colors on a dark background representing different types of disabilities: red for physical, gold for cognitive and intellectual, white for non-visible and undiagnosed, blue for psychiatric and green for sensory.

“When I see the flag today, it represents not just the depth of commitment, but the community that my blind aunt and uncle and my uncle who had polio belonged in as well,” McNiven said. “So, I think having that flag represents the community, and it’s important to remind the community that we are here.”

The weekend’s festivities, too, may act as that reminder, painting the Plaza in color and music.

“It will be an amazing opportunity for New Mexico and the community to come out and celebrate and recognize … what it means to have access and what it means to have dignity as a person,” Ellis said. “Because at the end of the day, everyone with a disability is a person.”

Lily Alexander is a state accountability reporter for The Santa Fe New Mexican, focusing on equity and transparency. Her position is part of the New Mexican Public Service Journalism Fund. She was a 2025-2026 New Mexico Local News Fellow at The New Mexican. Lily holds a bachelor’s degree in multimedia journalism from the University of New Mexico, where she served as the editor-in-chief of its independent student newspaper, TheDaily Lobo. There, she reported on transparency at the university police department and filed a now-settled public records lawsuit for access to the department’s weapons inventory.

This story was originally published by Searchlight New Mexico