A Look at Repealing a Developmental Disability Statue
By Conor Darken
A law was repealed that could have a negative effect on Floridians with disabilities. Why does this matter? It affects disabled Floridians that could be helped by this state law and the federal laws that have been gone for years. It throws into jeopardy whether this nonprofit is legally viable at all.
When governments pass laws in the legislative branch, and when those governments sign approval of those laws in the executive branch, you expect that those laws will be remaining in effect. However, sometimes governments undergo a process called “repealing” a law, which means they pass and sign another law saying the one currently existing no longer will.
This can be of little or major effect, depending on what the prior law said and how much of an actual physical presence in people’s lives it had. Sometimes it is a small effect, because it is a small law covering a small matter. Sometimes it is quite different.
The topic of this essay is to discuss a set of federal laws that have been repealed and to determine whether their absence is a large or small issue, especially considering how it affects the laws (specifically one law) and behavior of the government of the State of Florida, which is where I live.
The federal laws, which are passed by Congress and signed by the President, are called statutes, and the relevant ones here are designated as follows: in numeric order, Title 42: The Public Health and Welfare, chapter 75: Programs For Individuals With Disabilities, section 6000 (along with others following it), s. 6021, and s. 6024(d)(2)(i) , of the same title and chapter. From the wording given in the Florida statute, I believe these federal statutes comprise Part B of the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act. If you go to the official US House website hosting the US Code of law, you can see that ALL of the statutes in all of the 6 subchapters forming Chapter 75 have been repealed, meaning they all no longer legally exist. From what I’ve seen on that website, Chapter 75 got repealed on 2 separate dates: April 6, 1994, and October 30, 2000.
I’m not sure why Chapter 75 was repealed by Congress, and I don’t know why President Clinton signed those bills repealing it. But I do know that it is still affecting the State of Florida, because of a state statute we’ve got called Title XXIX: Public Health, Chapter 393: Developmental Disabilities, section 002: Transfer of Florida Developmental Disabilities Council as formerly created in this chapter to private nonprofit corporation . As stated by the short title of the section, this enables what was a state agency to be transferred to the control of a nonprofit organization. Setting aside the discussion of whether that would be a good idea and why it was enacted by the State of Florida, there remains the simple question of whether this law is an actual effective law given that it relies on defunct federal authority.
Upon further searching and inspection of US Code Title 42 (which is rather long) I was able to find the contents of Chapter 144 : Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights. I think at least some of this chapter to be a revision of the repealed Chapter 75, especially the contents of Subchapter I of Chapter 144 , called Programs For Individuals with Developmental Disabilities. The most relevant part of Subchapter I is Part B : Federal Assistance To State Councils on Developmental Disabilities.
This may be used as proof that my argument here is invalid. My argument is there is indeed no problem. Perhaps there is not, in terms of the policies and programs existing in Chapter 75 (probably) still existing in Chapter 144 (I haven’t been able to find the repealed text of Chapter 75, so I cannot compare it with the active Chapter 144).
But the matter still exists that I only found the text of Chapter 144 by luck, while randomly browsing through the US Code because it’s an unending hobby of mine. Reasonably, I should have been able to find it much sooner and far more easily as the replacement designation for a chunk of federal disability law. Along with this is the fact that the State of Florida still, ever since the creation of Section 2 of Chapter 393, has a repealed chapter of federal law as the basis for active state disability law.
Why does this matter? It affects disabled Floridians that could be helped by this state law and the federal laws that have been repealed and re-designated for 19 years & 25 years, respectively. It brings into question how the Florida Legislature can’t be bothered to know or care exactly how one of their own statutes creating a State Disability Council under the power of a nonprofit organization can rely on a set of repealed federal laws when it is their job. It has been their job since October 30th, which is when Chapter 75 was repealed. §393.002 was first created in 1995 and subsequently amended 5 times since then. The last time was 2014. It makes us wonder what other oversights like this exist in the laws governing us. It throws into jeopardy whether the State Disability Council’s operations as a nonprofit are legally viable at all.
Federal law Title 42, Chapter 75 link: https://uscode.house.gov/browse/prelim@title42/chapter75&edition=prelim
Federal law Title 42, Chapter 144 link: https://uscode.house.gov/browse/prelim@title42/chapter144&edition=prelim
State law Chapter 393, Section 2 link: http://leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0300-0399/ 0393/Sections/0393.002.html
