Protecting society’s weak and vulnerable

When Zena Naiditch was hired as Equip For Equality’s president and CEO in the mid-1980s, she had a vision to grow the small program designed to service developmentally disabled individuals into a team with the resources to push for systemic change across the entire state.

With help from its pro bono partners and expanded congressional assistance, Equip for Equality has realized that vision and celebrated its 30th year of disability advocacy.

The non-profit organization entered the Illinois scene as the state’s third entity to serve as an independent protection and advocacy agency for those with disabilities. Congress had outlined the design for such programs in the 1970s, to be implemented on a state-by-state basis, in response to the way developmentally disabled people were being treated in New York state institutions during that time.

As more information and reports became available through the years about the treatment of disabled people, Congress gradually increased the state agencies’ role in terms of who they could advocate for and eventually gave the organizations statutory powers to investigate and conduct its own research, Naiditch said.

“That’s what I think makes us really unique is the idea not just that we can be lawyers for people, but there was a recognition that people with disabilities like in (Willowbrook, N.Y.) were in segregated settings, the public can’t walk in or out,” she said. “People really were at high risk, and so they wanted a program that could actually go and walk into facilities, visit with people, observe what’s going on and potentially identify people that they need to advocate for.”

And while the group’s larger-scale efforts came later, it found that a significant portion of its individual case work informed and propelled the more systematic changes it had worked with the legislature to pass.

Such was the case in the early 2000s, when Equip for Equality represented a girl in court whose guardian tried to unilaterally remove her reproductive organs and, in effect, her reproductive rights.

Her case reached an appellate court ruling that said the girl had a right to due process protections, but the organization wanted that court’s ruling to impact more people than just the individual it represented.

“The organization worked with its public policy arm to develop legislation to codify that decision into law,” said Barry C. Taylor, vice president for the group’s civil rights and systemic litigation arm. “By using the individual legal representation, it ended up resulting in this large statewide legislation which we probably couldn’t have gotten if we hadn’t done the individual case first.”

But Equip For Equality’s impact has gone even deeper than tackling specific issues for one group of people. It has also successfully litigated and settled three class-action lawsuits that have helped provide community services to large numbers of people with different disabilities.

For example, the group worked with some pro bono partners, such as Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Dentons US LLP, to file a class-action suit against the Chicago Transit Authority in 2000 after hearing complaints that people with mobility impairments were having difficulties getting on and off the buses. The group also heard complaints from those with vision impairment, who said drivers weren’t always calling out stops.

“It was a case where what we wanted to do was we wanted to help as many people as possible through one suit,” Taylor said. “In Chicago, the trains and the buses are sort of very connected. People oftentimes use both to get to a place, and so we didn’t want to just focus on the buses or the trains or one aspect like bus lifts breaking down or elevators being broken down on the L stops.”

Part of the case’s solution called for the installation of a GPS system that automatically called out the stops so people could better navigate their routes. The CTA also agreed to implement an audiovisual component so people who are deaf could be accommodated as well.

“So we actually represented people with mobility impairments, people who are deaf and people who are blind all in the same suit — for both buses and trains — and so it was really a comprehensive approach,” Taylor said.

While the organization has helped the state take great strides in taking its disabled residents out of institutions and helping to integrate them in their communities, Naiditch said there is progress to be made in the area of employment.

“One of the big challenges now is that people want to work,” she said. “They don’t want to work in a workshop … they want to have a real job in the community.”

To help stimulate change on that front, the organization has worked with some of its pro bono partners to conduct a 50-state survey of what other states are doing to employ people with disabilities. Their research results were then compiled into what the organization calls a “blueprint” on how the state can increase employment opportunities for its own disabled residents.

“It’s unique because a lot of times when we think about pro bono, we think about helping out for an individual case, and we use pro bono to do things like this public policy research and our systemic litigation which I think is maybe not the typical way of using pro bono and has really allowed people to have a lot of different options and a lot of great support,” Taylor said.

Equip for Equality’s 24 different pro bono partners provide services ranging from legal advice to assistance litigating class action lawsuits to working with the legislature to push statewide reforms.

One such partner is Thomas O. Kuhns, general counsel and Chicago partner of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Naiditch turned to Kuhns for assistance while attempting to grown the organization.

Kuhns said Naiditch’s personality and demeanor weren’t his only motivating factors in agreeing to work with the organization.

“What motivated my desire as an attorney to help Equip for Equality was the desire to work with Zena in advocating the rights of those of some of the weakest and most vulnerable people in our society,” he said. “Those with developmental disabilities have rights that are explicitly spelled out in state statutes, and Zena does a terrific job in advocating for those individuals.”

And although Kuhns has maintained less of a day-to-day relationship with Equip For Equality over time, he said he is proud that his firm has maintained its deep relationship with the organization and looks forward to seeing future advancements the two will work together to help stimulate.

“We would hope to be able to assist Equip For Equality going forward as we have in the past, and I think that under Zena’s and her administration’s leadership, the role for Equip for Equality and their advocacy for rights of the developmentally disabled is in good hands,” he said.