The Trump administration looked at a 90-year-old law that gives blind Americans a shot at running dining halls on Army bases and decided: no. Not with evidence. Not with process. Not with anything resembling the rule of law. Just no.
On July 31, Chief Judge George L. Russell of the Maryland U.S. District Court ruled that Education Secretary Linda McMahon broke the law when she tried to gut the Randolph-Sheppard Act, the 1936 statute that guarantees blind entrepreneurs priority to operate vending facilities on federal property. McMahon issued a sweeping waiver last year to strip that priority from every Army dining facility nationwide. She claimed the program “adversely affects the interests of the United States” and hurts “military readiness.” The judge found that the factual findings McMahon relied on were, by the administration’s own admission, incorrect. She never published supporting documentation. She never notified the public or allowed comments. She just did it.
National Museum of the U.S. Navy (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsThat is not governance. That is a power grab dressed up in the language of efficiency.
Let us be clear about who did this. Linda McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive with no background in disability policy or education, used her authority at the department that oversees the Randolph-Sheppard program to try to dismantle it from the inside. Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, for his part, went on a podcast and complained that the law means the government has to “prioritize blind people when we go out for our chicken contracts.” That is a Cabinet official reducing a civil rights statute to a punchline about poultry procurement. The contempt is not subtle. It is the entire strategy.
Four blind vendors and two advocacy organizations, the National Association of Blind Merchants and the National Federation of the Blind, sued. They did not ask for a favor. They demanded accountability. And they won. Judge Russell blocked McMahon’s waiver, ruling that she “failed to follow the procedural requirements” under both the law and her own department’s policy.
US Government (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsMark Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind, named exactly what happened: the administration tried to abandon a nine-decade commitment to blind workers “through a closed process built on incomplete and inaccurate information.” Nicky Gacos, president of the National Association of Blind Merchants, called the ruling “a victory for every blind entrepreneur who has invested years of hard work.” These are people who built businesses, served soldiers, paid taxes, and then watched a Cabinet secretary try to erase their livelihoods with a memo backed by nothing.
This was never an isolated incident. During last year’s government shutdown, the same administration tried to lay off three blind workers inside the Education Department who administer the Randolph-Sheppard program itself. Congress had to step in and reverse those layoffs. The pattern is unmistakable: target disability employment, strip away the infrastructure that supports it, and dare anyone to stop you.
Павел Хлыстунов / PexelsOne federal worker told HuffPost last year that the mentality driving all of this is the belief that if a disabled person has a job, they are “taking it away from an able-bodied person.” That is the ideology at work here. Not fiscal responsibility. Not military readiness. A zero-sum worldview in which disabled people’s economic participation is treated as theft.
The court said no. The law still stands. But the fight is not over. The Randolph-Sheppard Act is a proven pathway to employment and independence for blind Americans, and this administration has made clear it will keep coming for it. Every lawmaker who claims to care about disabled workers, every advocate who understands that civil rights are only as durable as the pressure to enforce them, needs to treat this ruling as a beginning, not a conclusion. The courts held the line. Now the public has to hold the administration accountable for what it tried to do in the dark.