Nebraska court greenlights challenge to one-size-fits-all disability care mandate
When a Nebraska agency tried to force every disability care provider in the state to use a single, costly training program, a company called Integrated Life Choices refused to let it go unchallenged. On Wednesday, their principled stand won validation from the District Court of Lancaster County, Nebraska, which denied the State’s motion to dismiss—handing Integrated Life a promising early victory in its fight against agency overreach.
Developing Core Supports
For nearly two decades, Integrated Life Choices has provided essential services to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities across Nebraska. The company operates group homes with round-the-clock staff, offers support for clients living independently, and helps people with disabilities build the skills they need to find employment in their communities.
Because every client has unique needs, Integrated Life saw an opportunity in 2021 to build something better than the off-the-shelf training programs available at the time—many of which use identical protocols for children and adults, failing to recognize the different support needs among the broad population of adults seeking care.
The result of Integrated Life’s hard work was Core Supports, a custom Emergency Safety Intervention (ESI) curriculum designed specifically for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The program drew on best practices from across the country and was tailored to the population Integrated Life actually serves.
Nebraska approved Core Supports, and the results spoke for themselves. Safety incidents dropped, workers’ compensation claims fell, and staff were better equipped to handle behavioral crises while prioritizing client dignity.
The State steps in
In February 2024, Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services issued Provider Bulletin 24-01, ordering every provider in the state to abandon programs like Core Supports and adopt a single for-profit system instead. The mandated program was broad, designed for both adults and children, and did not account for the distinct needs of a diverse population. It lumped all clients with intellectual or developmental disabilities into one category and overlooked the qualifications of actual care providers—Integrated Life among them—to know just what kind of training their staff required.
The mandate even reversed course on its own policy, which, up until then, had recognized that different providers may require different ESI approaches to best serve their clients and asked providers to submit their training programs for individualized review.
The program’s shortcomings were bad enough. But to add insult to injury, the DHHS rule also forced providers to pay for it—and it wasn’t cheap.
“We have to bring all of our trainers into Lincoln or Omaha in order to get trained,” COO Justin Solomon explained. “The total annual reoccurring costs are somewhere in the neighborhood of $150,000; the upfront costs to get everyone trained are somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000.”
Compliance at the expense of care
The new system came with requirements that didn’t reflect the realities of working with adults with developmental disabilities. For example, it required staff to say “pardon my touch” before physically intervening during a crisis—a standard that sounds reasonable on paper but ignores the fast-moving, unpredictable situations staff actually face. Layer enough of those kinds of rigid, ill-fitting rules onto providers, and the result isn’t better care.
“If you keep adding regulation on top of layers of regulation, you eventually get to the point where people are just babysitting because there’s too much liability to do anything else. And I refuse to be in an industry that just babysits adults,” Justin said.
Taking the fight to court
In August 2025, Integrated Life teamed up with Pacific Legal Foundation to challenge Provider Bulletin 24-01 in court. The lawsuit argued that DHHS bypassed the rulemaking procedures required under Nebraska’s Administrative Procedure Act, violated the separation of powers by imposing a binding mandate without legislative authority, and denied providers due process.
And on March 3, 2026, a state court sided with Integrated Life.
The court denied the State’s motion to dismiss the case, clearing the way for the lawsuit to move forward. In its Wednesday ruling, the court held that Integrated Life’s arguments overcame the State’s motion, “sufficiently alleg[ing] that Director [Tony] Green acted beyond his lawful authority by approving and enforcing an invalid rule.”
The mandated system may have made the State’s paperwork easier, but it came at the expense of the people it claimed to protect. With this ruling, Integrated Life has won a meaningful victory in its ongoing battle to ensure that the individuals in its care will not be shortchanged by such an overreach.
