HELENA — On Monday, disability advocates gathered in Helena, seeking to deliver a message to Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen about a federal lawsuit that they said is threatening the foundation of protections for people with disabilities.

“Get out of the case: It’s that simple,” said David Carlson, executive director of Disability Rights Montana.

(Watch the video to hear from advocates and the attorney general's office.)

Disability Rights hosted a news conference where advocacy organizations argued that the suit, from 17 Republican attorneys general, was a threat to Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act. That provision requires any program that receives federal money to give equal access to people with disabilities. It’s best known from “504 plans” – formal education plans that schools develop to support students with disabilities – but advocates say it goes much further.

“504, really when it comes down to it, is what allows me to live and be a person who can exist and be productive and contribute to society in a way that's meaningful to me,” said Opal Besaw, a writer and activist from Kalispell, who has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy.

Jacob Krissovich, advocacy and public policy chair for the National Federation of the Blind of Montana, said Section 504 came before the Americans with Disabilities Act and other protections people have come to depend on.

“So my question to you is, what happens to the rest of those laws if this is stripped away?” he asked.

After the news conference, advocates went to Knudsen’s office in Helena to deliver a letter, calling on him to withdraw the state from the lawsuit.

However, a spokesperson for Knudsen argued in a statement to MTN that the concerns are mistaken.

“Bad faith actors are deliberately misconstruing this lawsuit nine months after it was filed to frighten parents into believing that the Attorneys General put Section 504 in jeopardy,” said Emilee Cantrell. “That is categorically false.”

The state attorneys general, led by Ken Paxton of Texas, sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in federal district court last year. The case primarily focused on a rule from the Biden administration, which sought to add gender dysphoria as a condition entitled to protection under Section 504. However, in the original complaint, attorneys wrote, “Because Section 504 is coercive, untethered to the federal interest in disability, and unfairly retroactive, the Rehabilitation Act is not constitutional under the spending clause.” They asked the court for an injunction, stopping the department from enforcing the section.

Last week, the state attorneys general submitted a new status report. In it, they said “they have never moved—and do not plan to move—the Court to declare or enjoin Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794, as unconstitutional on its face.” Instead, they said the complaint was only intended to challenge applying 504 to federal funds not authorized by the Rehabilitation Act.

“Nothing in Plaintiffs’ Complaint seeks to restrain the disbursement of federal funds from the Department on the basis that the statute is unconstitutional, or to otherwise prevent the Federal Government from allocating spending or applying the provisions of the Rehabilitation Act to any recipients of such funds,” they wrote.

In addition, the status report says that the Trump administration has begun reversing some of the Biden-era policies on gender, so the case should remain on hold anyway.

“From the beginning, the AG’s lawsuit sought to protect students served by Section 504 in Montana by refusing to let Joe Biden hold students with disabilities hostage over radical gender ideology,” Cantrell said in her statement.

Scott Birkenbuel, chief executive officer of Ability Montana, said regardless of the states’ intentions, the language in the case hasn’t changed.

“They are trying to tear it down, and they've not made any statements to make me think otherwise,” he said.

He said he hopes to be able to have a meeting with Knudsen, so they can explain their position.

MTN asked Birkenbuel if he expected the case might simply end now that the Trump administration is reconsidering the policy at issue. He said, while that’s possible, advocates are going to keep watching closely in the meantime.

“I think the disability community, we are going to continue to remain vigilant and focused and so that we don't get so it doesn't get drowned out by all the other noise in the political arena right now,” he said.

Besaw said she thought back to a 1977 protest when people with disabilities held a 26-day-long sit-in to pressure the federal government to enforce Section 504.

“If this law is to go away, we are disgracing the work that those 200 activists have done,” she said.

A federal judge in Texas accepted the most recent request to keep a stay on this case, with the next update due by April.