Real Safety AI Foundation / Research

Disability, Accessibility, and Civil Rights

The State as Deployer: Title II of the ADA and Government Artificial Intelligence

Publisher: Real Safety AI Foundation

Working draft. Not peer reviewed.

Written
June 2026
Version
v3
Pages
21
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Abstract

When a state or local government deploys an artificial intelligence system to deliver its own programs, services, or activities, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act reaches that government directly. Title II carries no federal financial assistance requirement, so the procurement and recipient questions that confine Section 504 do not arise, and it carries no physical place or nexus requirement, so the circuit split that has stranded purely digital providers under Title III does not arise either. A public entity cannot escape the statute by purchasing a discriminatory tool instead of building one. This Article develops the route that does not depend on winning the hardest fight. It locates the public entity behind the automated decision, shows that the contractual arrangements and methods of administration regulations at 28 C.F.R. §35.130(b)(1) and (b)(3) bar a government from contracting out of the duty, draws the boundary that keeps the theory honest by distinguishing service delivery from mere licensing, and corrects the record on that boundary’s most quoted authority, Ivy v. Williams, which the Supreme Court vacated as moot and which now binds no court. It then demonstrates that an automated system that systematically degrades a public service for a class of people with disabilities is a method of administration with a cognizable disparate impact and an attendant duty of reasonable modification. The Article then confronts the obstacle that cannot be skipped. The marquee government algorithm decisions, Elder v. Gillespie in the Eighth Circuit and K.W. v. Armstrong in the Ninth, were won on procedural due process and expressly declined to reach the disability theory or the validity of the algorithm itself. That leaves the clean Title II disparate impact holding unplanted across two circuits. The Article meets the sovereign immunity question on two tracks. Prospective injunctive relief under Ex parte Young is the safe harbor, and against

Keywords

  • Americans with Disabilities Act
  • Title II
  • Section 504
  • artificial intelligence
  • algorithmic decision systems
  • disparate impact
  • reasonable modification
  • sovereign immunity
  • public entities
  • procurement
  • government technology

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Suggested citation

Gilly, Travis. "The State as Deployer: Title II of the ADA and Government Artificial Intelligence." Real Safety AI Foundation Working Draft, June 2026. https://realsafetyai.org/research/state-as-deployer/

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References (43)

This paper cites its sources in footnotes. Each authority is listed once, where it is first cited, with its footnote number.

  1. Footnote 1.29 U.S.C. §794(a)
  2. Footnote 1.U.S. Dep’t of Transp. v. Paralyzed Veterans of Am., 477 U.S. 597 (1986) (procurement contracts are not federal financial assistance for purposes of the funding trigger).
  3. Footnote 2.Carparts Distribution Ctr., Inc. v. Auto. Wholesaler’s Ass’n of New England, 37 F.3d 12, 19 (1st Cir. 1994) (functional reading, no physical place required), and Pallozzi v. Allstate Life Ins. Co., 198 F.3d 28, 32–33 (2d Cir. 1999) (same), with Weyer v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 198 F.3d 1104, 1114–15 (9th Cir. 2000) (physical place or nexus required).
  4. Footnote 3.42 U.S.C. §§12131–12132.
  5. Footnote 4.Office of Admin., Commonwealth of Pa., Shapiro Administration and OpenAI Launch First-in-the-Nation Generative AI Pilot (Jan. 9, 2024), https://www.pa.gov/agencies/oa/newsroom/shapiro-administration-and-openai-launch-first-in-the-nation-generative-ai-pilot.html (pilot limited to Office of Administration employees, and stating that no resident would interact directly with the tool)
  6. Footnote 4.Inside Tennessee’s Deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise, StateScoop (Mar. 9, 2026), https://statescoop.com/tennessee-chatgpt-enterprise-kristin-darby/.
  7. Footnote 5.Elder v. Gillespie, 54 F.4th 1055 (8th Cir. 2022).
  8. Footnote 6.D.W. v. Armstrong, 789 F.3d 962 (9th Cir. 2015).
  9. Footnote 7.42 U.S.C. §12132.
  10. Footnote 8.42 U.S.C. §12131(1).
  11. Footnote 10.28 C.F.R. §35.130(a).
  12. Footnote 11.28 C.F.R. §35.130(b)(1) (verified current text).
  13. Footnote 12.28 C.F.R. §35.130(b)(3)(i)–(ii) (verified current text).
  14. Footnote 13.Battle v. State of Tennessee, No. 3:22-cv-00022 (M.D. Tenn. Sept. 24, 2025)
  15. Footnote 13.Prado v. City of Berkeley, No. 3:23-cv-04537 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 6, 2024).
  16. Footnote 14.Mobley v. Workday, Inc., 740 F. Supp. 3d 796 (N.D. Cal. 2024).
  17. Footnote 16.Noel v. New York City Taxi & Limousine Comm’n, 687 F.3d 63, 72 (2d Cir. 2012).
  18. Footnote 17.Ivy v. Williams, 781 F.3d 250, 256 (5th Cir. 2015), vacated as moot sub nom.
  19. Footnote 17.Ivy v. Morath, 580 U.S. 956 (2016).
  20. Footnote 18.United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36 (1950).
  21. Footnote 19.Price v. Shibinette, 2021 DNH 179 (D.N.H. 2021).
  22. Footnote 22.Alexander v. Choate, 469 U.S. 287, 296–97 (1985).
  23. Footnote 23.Crowder v. Kitagawa, 81 F.3d 1480, 1484–86 (9th Cir. 1996).
  24. Footnote 24.Payan v. Los Angeles Cmty. Coll. Dist., 11 F.4th 729, 740 (9th Cir. 2021).
  25. Footnote 24.Payan v. Los Angeles Cmty. Coll. Dist., No. 24-1809 (9th Cir. Mar. 11, 2026) (subsequent appeal on remand).
  26. Footnote 25.28 C.F.R. §35.130(b)(3).
  27. Footnote 26.28 C.F.R. §35.130(b)(8) (verified current text).
  28. Footnote 27.28 C.F.R. §35.130(b)(7)(i) (verified current text).
  29. Footnote 28.Elder v. Gillespie, No. 3:19-CV-00155 KGB, 2021 WL 1226671 (E.D. Ark. Mar. 31, 2021) (district court opinion)
  30. Footnote 28.Estate of Jacobs v. Gillespie, No. 3:16-cv-00119 (E.D. Ark. Nov. 1, 2016).
  31. Footnote 30.Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908).
  32. Footnote 33.29 U.S.C. §794(b)(1)(A).
  33. Footnote 34.42 U.S.C. §2000d-7(a)(1).
  34. Footnote 35.Lane v. Pena, 518 U.S. 187, 200 (1996).
  35. Footnote 36.Koslow v. Pennsylvania, 302 F.3d 161 (3d Cir. 2002).
  36. Footnote 38.Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller, P.L.L.C., 596 U.S. 212 (2022) (emotional distress damages unavailable under the Spending Clause statutes)
  37. Footnote 38.Barnes v. Gorman, 536 U.S. 181 (2002) (punitive damages unavailable).
  38. Footnote 39.Duvall v. County of Kitsap, 260 F.3d 1124 (9th Cir. 2001).
  39. Footnote 40.United States v. Georgia, 546 U.S. 151 (2006) (Title II validly abrogates sovereign immunity insofar as it creates a private cause of action for conduct that independently violates the Fourteenth Amendment).
  40. Footnote 41.City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997)
  41. Footnote 41.Tennessee v. Lane, 541 U.S. 509 (2004).
  42. Footnote 42.Bd. of Trustees of Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356 (2001) (Title I abrogation invalid; disability classifications reviewed for rational basis)
  43. Footnote 42.City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., 473 U.S. 432 (1985) (rational basis for disability classifications).

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