Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund

Overview

The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), founded in 1979, is a leading national civil rights law and policy center directed by individuals with disabilities and parents who have children with disabilities.

Mission

To advance the civil and human rights of people with disabilities through legal advocacy, training, education, and public policy and legislative development. We envision a just world where all people, with and without disabilities, live full and independent lives free of discrimination.

Program

Children & Family Advocacy: We provide training, information, and resources about special education rights for students with disabilities, and we advocate for them with school officials, policy and decision makers, and in the courts.

Training & Education: We train and educate people with disabilities, parents of children with disabilities lawyers, service providers, government officials, and many others about disability civil rights laws and policies.

Legal Advocacy: We represent clients in state and federal court, serve as co-counsel, and file amicus curiae briefs in appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court in high impact and law reform disability rights cases.

Public Policy & Legislation: We design and carry out strategies that strengthen public policy and that lead to the enactment of federal and state laws protecting and advancing civil rights for people with disabilities.

International: We collaborate internationally on legislative, training, advocacy and community organizing strategies with leaders with disabilities, parents of children with disabilities, and advocacy, services, and law and policy organizations.

Research: We conduct research and report on issues that affect the rights of people with disabilities.

Impact

DREDF’s impact derives from a quarter century devoted to developing a carefully reasoned law and policy foundation to ensure equal opportunity and the protection of individual rights for all persons with disabilities. Through training, legal advocacy, and legislative and policy development DREDF has launched a sea change in the way society views disability. No longer is poverty and social isolation perceived as an inevitable consequence of the limitations imposed by disability. Rather, they are now recognized as the result of society's historic responses to those limitations: lack of accessibility and policies that encourage or even require exclusion, segregation, and institutionalization.

Countries of Operation

United States