Lois Curtis, Artist and Advocate for Disability Rights, Dies at 55

Curtis was the lead plaintiff in a landmark 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave people with disabilities the right to seek care services in their own homes and communities instead of living in institutions.

As a young woman, she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and developmental disabilities. By her late 20s she had lived over half her life in state institutions. Isolated and angry, she chain smoked to pass the time and prayed to God at night, asking to be rescued from the Georgia Regional Hospital in Atlanta.

Sue Jamieson, an Atlanta Legal Aid lawyer, filed a lawsuit on behalf of Curtis and one of her friends, Elaine Wilson. When the case came before the Supreme Court, it ruled that gave people with disabilities have the right to receive care and support services in their own homes and communities, not just in state institutions. The case, called Olmstead v. L.C., empowered the disability rights movement because it set a  legal framework for people with disabilities to secure the right to live, work, and study in their own communities. Some called it the movement’s Brown v. Board of Education. Read the Supreme Court's majority opinion

The effect has been significant. Additional court cases extended the legal reach of the decision, applying it to not just to psychiatric hospitals but to nursing homes and other institutions receiving state and federal funding. Advocates used the decision to fight for people with disabilities’ right to learn in the same classroom as other students and to work in the same workplace as other employees. Most state disability services were then provided in institutions, but now “the vast majority of services” is now “provided to people in their own homes and in their own communities.”

Through her legal advocacy and appearances at disability rights conferences, Curtis became a nationally recognized figure, admired for her optimism and tenacity.  

Read the November 8, 2022 Washington Post obituary.