"simplify You, Classify You": Stigma, Stereotypes and Civil Rights in Disability Classification Systems

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Publication year: 2010
• Citation: Vol. 25 No. 3

Georgia State University Law Review

Volume 25 j 6

Issue 3 Spring 2009

4-1-2009

"Simplify You, Classify You": Stigma, Stereotypes and Civil Rights in Disability Classification Systems

Michael L. Perlin

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Recommended Citation

Perlin, Michael L. (2008) ""Simplify You, Classify You": Stigma, Stereotypes and Civil Rights in Disability Classification Systems," Georgia State University Law Review: Vol. 25: Iss. 3, Article 6. Available at: http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/gsulr/vol25/iss3Z6

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"SIMPLIFY YOU, CLASSIFY YOU": STIGMA, STEREOTYPES AND CIVIL RIGHTS IN DISABILITY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS

Michael L. Perlin*

Introduction

Before becoming a professor, I spent thirteen years as a practitioner, mostly representing criminal defendants with mental disabilities and persons subjected to involuntary civil commitment or committed to psychiatric hospitals. I have taught mental disability law for twenty-five years, and in the past eighteen of those years, my research and scholarship has focused mostly on what I call "sanism"¹ and on what I call "pretextuality," shorthand for the ways that prejudice towards persons with mental disabilities leads to stigma and stereotyping, and the ways that these factors malignantly distort both the legislative and judicial processes. I believe that these factors are constant whether the topic is commitment, the right to refuse treatment, sexual autonomy, deinstitutionalization, any aspect of the criminal trial process, from the determination of competency to stand trial to the ultimate death penalty decision, or the relationship between international human rights law and mental disability law.⁴ In

* Professor of Law, New York Law School. Director, International Mental Disability Law Reform Project. Director, Online Mental Disability Law Program. The author wishes to thank Jackie Halpern and Lisa Ruff for their excellent research assistance, and Laura Rothstein, Mark Weber, and Theresa Glennon for their helpful advice. A much earlier version of this paper was presented at the Third Anglo-American Symposium on Special Education & School Reform at Cambridge University, England, June 10, 2004.

1. See, e.g., Michael L. Perlin, On "Sanism", 46 SMU L. Rev. 373 (1992).

2. See, e.g., Michael L. Perlin, Pretexts andMental Disability Law: The Case of Competency, 47 U. Miami L. Rev. 625 (1993).

3. See generally Michael L. Perlin, The Hidden Prejudice: Mental Disability on Trial (2000); Michael L. Perlin, 'Half-Wracked Prejudice Leaped Forth': Sanism, Pretextuality, and Why and How Mental Disability Law Developed As It Did, 10 J. Contemp. Legal Iss. 3 (1999).

4. See, e.g., Michael L. Perlin, The Jurisprudence of the Insanity Defense (1994); Michael L. Perlin, Keri K. Gould, & Deborah A. Dorfman, Therapeutic Jurisprudence and the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Mentally Disabled Persons: Hopeless Oxymoron or Path to Redemption?, 1 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. 80 (1995); Michael L. Perlin & Deborah A. Dorfman, Is It More Than "Dodging Lions and Wastin' Time"? Adequacy of Counsel, Questions of Competence, and the Judicial Process in

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this paper I consider the question of the extent to which these factors and these principles do or do not equally contaminate the special education process, and the decision to label certain children as learning disabled.⁵ I begin with my ultimate thesis: The process of labeling children with intellectual disabilities is not merely a double-edged sword; it is at least a triple-edged and perhaps a quadruple-edged (or quintuple-edged) one. It is essential that policy makers acknowledge this in any recalibration of statutory standards or educational policy "reforms" that are undertaken. If we ignore these conflicting issues, barriers, and dilemmas, we run the risk of recreating a system that unnecessarily stigmatizes and fails to provide adequate services to those who need them.

In coming to these conclusions, I have identified five conflicts and clusters of policy issues that we must consider:

Individual Right to Refuse Treatment Cases, 2 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. 114 (1996); Michael L. Perlin, Hospitalized Patients and the Right to Sexual Interaction: Beyond the Last Frontier?, 20 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 517 (1993-1994); Michael L. Perlin, "What's Good Is Bad, What's Bad Is Good, You'll Find out When You Reach the Top, You're on the Bottom": Are the Americans with Disabilities Act (and Olmstead v. L.C.j Anything More than "Idiot Wind?", 35 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 235 (2001-2002); Michael L. Perlin, "You Have Discussed Lepers and Crooks": Sanism in Clinical Teaching, 9 Clinical L. Rev. 683 (2002-2003); Michael L. Perlin, "And My Best Friend, My Doctor/Won't Even Say What It Is I've Got": The Role and Significance of Counsel in Right to Refuse Treatment Cases, 42 San Diego L. Rev. 735 (2005); Perlin, supra note 2; Michael L. Perlin, The Sanist Lives of Jurors in Death Penalty Cases: The Puzzling Role of "Mitigating" Mental Disability Evidence, 8 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol'y 239 (1994); Michael L. Perlin, "The Executioner's Face Is Always Well-Hidden": The Role of Counsel and the Courts in Determining Who Dies, 41 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 201 (1996); Michael L. Perlin, International Human Rights and Comparative Mental Disability Law: The Role of Institutional Psychiatry in the Suppression of Political Dissent, 39 Isr. L. Rev. 69 (2006); Michael L. Perlin, International Human Rights Law and Comparative Mental Disability Law: The Universal Factors, 34 Syracuse J. Int'l L. & Com. 333 (2006-2007).

5. I am no stranger to this area of the law. During my years as a mental health advocacy lawyer, I also spent two years as Acting Director of the Advocacy for the Developmentally Disabled Project Office of the New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate, and special education cases were among the core caseload of that office. When I was Special Counsel to the Commissioner of the Public Advocate Department, I filed a brief with the United States Supreme Court in Irving Independent School District v. Tatro, which held that the provision of clean intermittent catheterization was a "related service" to which the plaintiff was entitled under the Education of All Handicapped Children Act (EHA). 468 U.S. 883, 895 (1984). Finally, in my first years of full-time teaching, I directed New York Law School's Federal Litigation Clinic. In that position, I supervised students who represented children with disabilities at special education hearings before New York State administrative law judges.

2009] DISABILITY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS 609

• The need to ensure that all children receive adequate education;

• The need to ensure that the "cure" is not worse than the "illness"; that is, that the labeling of a child as being in need of special education services does not ensure that the child will forever be seen as a second-class citizen;

• The need to consider the ultimate impact this decision may have if the child eventually winds up in the criminal justice system;

• The need to consider the relationship between the decision-making in this system and issues of gender, social class, and race; and

• The need to consider the public's attitude that a learning disability label is an advantage to a child competing for admission to a prestigious university or graduate school.

I believe that it is essential to consider each of these—both separately and in context with each other—if we are to make some sense of the underlying problems and issues.

My paper will proceed in the following manner. In Part I, I will briefly trace the history of American federal legislation and special education law reform in the American courts. In Part II, I will consider some of the "real life" problems that create pitfalls in the implementation and enforcement of those laws. In Part III, I will look at the meanings of "sanism" and "pretextuality" in an effort to illuminate the insidious ways that stereotyping drives decisionmaking. In Part IV, I will consider issues of race and social class, looking specifically at the connection between these issues, sanism and pretextuality, and the implications of that connection for the purposes of this inquiry. In Part V, I will consider the unique relationship between special education labeling and the criminal justice system, paying particular attention to the important implications of the United States Supreme Court's 2002 decision in

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Atkins v. Virginia^ which bars the execution of persons with mental retardation. In Part VI, I will look at the way that special education labeling is seen as somehow different from other types of labeling, noting that some upper-middle class and upper class families sometimes view the label as a strategic or tactical advantage. Finally, I will conclude with some modest recommendations.

My title comes from Bob Dylan's classic (though never heard today) masterpiece, All I Really Want to Do. In it, Dylan pours out a litany of what he does not want to do to the object of his affections, opening with this verse:

I ain't lookin' to compete with you,

Beat or cheat or mistreat you,

Simplify you, classify you,

Deny, defy or crucify you.

All I really want to do

Is, baby, be friends with you.⁸

I expect that what we have done, and what we continue to do to learning disabled children, is precisely what Dylan promised not to do: "Simplify you, classify you."⁹ Writing about this topic, Professor Peter David Blanck has said: "Over the course of the twenty-first century, our challenge is...