Dear Friends and Supporters,

In 2025, Disability Rights California faced multi-faceted challenges and launched new strategies and tools to remain nimble in a rapidly changing political climate.  Despite 2025 being a time of disruption, we remained steadfast in our commitment to disability rights and social justice. This commitment often involved us pushing back on our Governor and the President of the United States at the same time.

Where leaders in Washington, DC and Sacramento have maligned the rights of unhoused people with disabilities, DRC has pushed back and called for a continuum of care that will produce results and not expand coercive, ineffective policies.

We used our protection and advocacy investigative authority to expose the shocking treatment of disabled detainees and patients at immigration detention centers and residential treatment centers. We worked with our new cross-disability alliance of disability-led organizations, the California Disability Leadership Alliance (CDLA), to host our first annual CDLA Action Day on the steps of the state capitol, showcasing the power of disability advocacy and calling on lawmakers to defend and advance the rights of their disabled constituents.

Building community, we celebrated the 35th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in Berkeley, hosted our 3rd annual gala in Sacramento, and conducted a high-impact outreach activity in Spanish in Manteca for families that have members with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

DRC created a Substack that already has over 16,000 subscribers and launched our first podcast to supplement our other communications platforms. We have been steadfast in our commitment to improving equity in healthcare, education, and other systems that serve our community. Alongside these systemic efforts, we continue to deliver quality legal services to people with all types of disabilities across our state.

We created two new units, working from the ground up to build empowerment. The power-building team works to bring together activists to fight for real change in our state and beyond, and the PULSE Unit—Peers Understanding, Listening, Supporting, and Educating, works to support people under conservatorship, in collaboration with the Department of Developmental Services (DDS).

DRC also continued our work at the national level, fighting against harmful federal cuts to Medi-Cal and the weakening of the federal role in protecting civil rights in education and other settings. This earned us a first-of-its-kind grant from the California Endowment to support our Medicaid advocacy and education efforts. Our Board Chair Sheri Farinha’s organization NorCal Services for Deaf & Hard of Hearing, hosted a summit on Deaf education in Washington, D.C., making the case for federal legislation to improve the quality of education for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students modeled after legislation that has passed in California and other states.

This year’s annual report includes, for the first time, original video stories that showcase our staff and collaborators articulating the impact of work in their own words. These stories reflect the values outlined in our new mission statement—to work in partnership with disabled people to defend rights, advance opportunities, grow power, and expand public support for disability justice.

As you read and view the updates from 2025, we hope you feel inspired to lock arms with us and create a better future for our state together.

Thank you for your continued support!

In service, 

Andrew J. Imparato
DRC CEO

Sheri Farinha
2024 DRC Board Chair