On May 16, the Department of Energy proposed eliminating accessibility requirements for more than 17,000 federally funded buildings used by millions of Americans. The agency claimed the change was “non-controversial,” issuing it as a direct final rule that bypasses the standard public notice and comment process.
This is not only the first reversal of federal civil rights protections on this scale in U.S. history, it is also procedurally unprecedented. The department is exploiting a shortcut designed for routine, non-substantive adjustments to decimate the right to equal access and block taxpayers from working in or even entering spaces they pay to support.
Outside of disability advocacy publications, this story has received zero national news coverage.
The media have a curious pattern when it comes to coverage of the rights of people with disabilities. In 2024, more than 40 national and even international media outlets — at least six major U.S. publications among them — devoted coverage to a woman in New York who won a $165,000 settlement in a dispute over her three emotional-support parrots.
In May, The New York Times gave front-page treatment to one female police officer in California accused of faking a disability. The media ignored a report from the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) estimating that 67,000 Americans — roughly the population of Palo Alto — could die in 2025 while waiting for disability benefits due to proposed Social Security staffing cuts.
Unfortunately, the media rarely portray people with disabilities, and particularly women and those with invisible conditions, as real people deserving of rights. Instead, we are cast in roles: inspirational angels or deceptive demons. Attention is diverted to clickbait stories about eccentric emotional support animals, even as fundamental legal protections are dismantled, with minimal media attention.
I know this pattern well. I have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, a disabling neuroimmune disease similar to Long COVID. When my accommodation requests, backed by documentation from top medical specialists, were ignored by the board of my Brooklyn apartment building, I filed complaints with the appropriate government agencies. Fortunately, I have legal insurance, because I was forced to spend years in court. I lost my home, life savings, and my health fighting to enforce rights that are supposed to be protected by law.
My lawyer pitched my story to the New York Post, and I agreed in hopes of gaining desperately needed public awareness for my condition, but the article reduced my debilitating condition to “a disabling allergy to laundry detergent.”
Habitat Magazine pounced on the sensationalized tale, reducing my struggle for safe housing to a “spat” and mocking my documented medical needs. My home equity was erased, and I still owe 24 years of mortgage payments on a home I no longer legally own. I have no idea how I will physically manage to move, or where I will go if no one enforces my right to necessary reasonable accommodations.
The court system has been no better. I was evicted after a judge reversed the previously granted accommodation I needed to be present at my trial. Another Judge ignored blatant violations of disability rights law and dismissed my complaint against my building without an evidentiary hearing.
This bias is systemic: “Disability” is the only protected class in which one must prove one’s membership to file a discrimination complaint. To prove that my rights have been violated, I have to upload my medical records to a publicly accessible website, even though nothing in those files can prove that my building ignored their legal obligation to facilitate equal access.
Media reinforcement of negative stereotypes reinforces discrimination, with dangerous and deadly consequences. The public can be hostile, even violent, towards people who get accommodations but don’t appear to be “deserving disabled.” People with ME experience suicide and suicidal ideation rates several times higher than the general population, driven not by depression but relentless encounters with disbelief and dismissal.
NPR recently reported the story of Taylor Carty, whose acceptance to medical school was revoked because her cerebral palsy interfered with performing CPR. The coverage was deservedly sympathetic. But Carty uses a wheelchair, has a commonly recognized condition, and wants to inspire little girls with disabilities to become doctors. She represents a comfortable, “deserving” disabled narrative.
Not all people with disabilities are inspirational role models. Most of us aren’t perfect — just like other humans. If we have to play an acceptable part in order to earn our rights, then we don’t have equal rights. And if the media continue to be quietly complicit in the face of an unprecedented rollback of human rights, this won’t just be hypothetical; it will be the law.
Jacqueline Peters, MBA/MPP, has lived with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis for 20 years, been on disability for 15 years, and spent five years pursuing legal action to enforce her right to housing accommodations under federal, New York state and New York City law.
