Today West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey is delivering on a promise to protect and return Section 504 to its true purpose—supporting children and adults with disabilities.
McCuskey joined a coalition of attorneys general to submit a comment letter supporting the Trump Administration’s revision to Section 504, which will return the Rule back to its original intent.
“Since day one, our goal has always been to protect Section 504 funding for the children and adults who rely on it—today and well into the future. That is why we challenged the language added by the Biden Administration, because it put this important funding at risk,” Attorney General McCuskey said. “Now, with these changes, I am confident the future of Section 504 is no longer in jeopardy and parents and caregivers can be assured they will continue to receive the valuable resources they have always received.”
In 2024, the Biden Administration sought to radically expand the definition of “disability” under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to include “gender dysphoria,” despite clear statutory language that expressly excludes “gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments.” In practice, the Rule risked diverting resources away from individuals with disabilities and jeopardized services in states that did not comply with the Biden Administration’s radical gender ideology.
In 2024, the West Virginia Attorney General’s Office was part of a coalition of states that challenged the rule, exposing its legal flaws and the severe harm it would impose on state budgets, operations, and those who rely on federal disability assistance. Now, the Trump Administration has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that will reverse the Biden-era Rule’s inclusion of gender dysphoria as a federally protected disability and restore the proper limits of federal disability law.
The comment was filed by a multistate coalition led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, joined by West Virginia and Attorneys General from Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah.
To read the comment, click here.
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