disability rights

January 24, 2023 - The poverty rate for people with disabilities is more than double that of our nondisabled counterparts, and the disparity is being driven by state policy choices that force us into institutions unnecessarily and allow employers to pay us subminimum wages. Some Southern states have already embraced reforms, and others should act now.

August 5, 2022 - Though they turned out in unprecedented numbers in the 2020 election, voters with disabilities still face significant barriers to casting a ballot in some places. Efforts are now underway in several states across the South — the region with the highest percentage of residents with disabilities — to remove obstacles and improve access for this growing voter demographic.

May 13, 2022 - A number of states, including several in the South, are bucking the federal policy that allows companies to pay workers with certain disabilities less than the basic minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The Biden administration recently took an initial step to address that pay disparity for tens of thousands of disabled workers nationwide, while a bill to end the practice is stalled in Congress.

October 4, 2021 - South Carolina is dealing with a high proportion of children suffering from COVID-19, but Gov. Henry McMaster (R) and other state leaders want to block public schools from enforcing mask mandates. We hear from teachers and doctors fighting to protect children from deadly infection.

January 3, 2013 - One of the biggest decisions facing North Carolina's new legislature and governor is whether to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to cover more than 500,000 low-income people. Much of the opposition to expansion is more about ideology than anything else, a visceral reaction to a law that has been mischaracterized since it was proposed.

October 11, 2012 - Civil rights leader Judith Browne Dianis of The Advancement Project makes the case for a new constitutional amendment protecting the right to vote, which most of the world's democracies already have.

August 29, 2012 - A by-the-numbers look at the city's resurrection in the wake of one of the deadliest and most destructive disasters ever to befall the United States.