Yaron Covo (Yale University), Inverse Integration and the Relational Deficit of Disability Rights Law, 124 Colum. L. Rev. (2024):
Integration has long been a central tenet of U.S. disability law. In both doctrine and scholarship, however, disability integration has been understood to operate in only one direction: integrating disabled persons into mainstream society. This conventional approach has overlooked a different model, inverse integration, whereby nondisabled persons enter or participate in disability-focused settings or activities. As this Article demonstrates, inverse integration is surprisingly popular. For example, nondisabled children study in special education programs, nondisabled persons reside in housing projects for disabled individuals, hearing actors perform in Deaf theaters, and nondisabled athletes compete in wheelchair sports.