For Immediate Release
September 23, 2005
Heather White
202-331-9260

A group of disabled and older Rehabilitation Services Administration employees sued Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings on Sept. 20, 2005 in federal court in Washington, D.C., asking the court to keep her from firing them when the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. RSA distributes federal grant monies to state and local organizations to provide job and independent living skills training to severely handicapped adults.

The employees work in regional offices around the country, where they help grant recipients comply with the law and help them run the programs more effectively. RSA's programs assist millions of disabled people in communities across the nation, and its employees provide a valuable knowledge base and institutional continuity for State VR agencies, which are often underfunded and have high staff turnover.

In February 2005, the agency announced it would close the regional offices and terminate all the employees, including the 24 plaintiffs, seventeen of whom are disabled and five of whom are blind. Only the 65 RSA regional employees, within the 4,500-employee Department of Education, were targeted for downsizing. According to former RSA Commissioner Dr. Joanne Wilson, who is blind, a Department of Education official told her that RSA has "too many blind employees." Dr. Wilson resigned from the agency in protest of the closing of the regional offices. In recent years the RSA parent organization, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, routinely made illegal inquiries about job applicants' disabilities before approving their hiring.

The hiring of qualified blind job applicants has been either delayed or rejected on at least three occasions in the last two years.

RSA contends that closing the regional offices will cut costs, and headquarters employees will take over the work that was done in the regions. George Chuzi, who is representing the group, says, "RSA apparently plans to help the local VR organizations by remote control." He is with Washington, D.C. law firm Kalijarvi, Chuzi and Newman, where associate Heather White also represents the plaintiffs.

The law suit notes that both Houses of Congress approved RSA's budget and appropriated more than was requested for some programs. The group questions why the Department of Education did not ask for enough money to pay the salaries of all of its employees. "They are motivated by equal parts dislike of people with disabilities and dislike of federal assistance to people with disabilities," says Wilson.

The law suit alleges that the decisions to close the regional offices and terminate the employees was motivated by the agency's culture of discrimination against people with disabilities, especially the blind. They also point to the agency's failure to offer to transfer them to headquarters in violation of the law on "transfers of function," which allows federal employees to move with their jobs when the functions they perform are moved from one competitive area to another.

The agency claims that this action is not a transfer of function, while simultaneously insisting that all functions that were previously performed in the regional offices will now be performed from headquarters. The duties performed in the regions will go on, but without the regional employees and their expertise.

According to the law suit, however, headquarters employees are unfamiliar with the duties of the regional employees, making even "remote control" impossible.

The group is seeking a temporary restraining order preventing RSA from firing the regional employees, who allege that with the high cost of health insurance and their preexisting conditions, once they are fired they will not be able to afford health care for themselves and their families.

The National Federation of the Blind has filed a related lawsuit on behalf of blind vendors who will be affected by the RSA's closing of regional offices. Both cases are now before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

For more information, E-mail us at: info@nfbct.org