For the first time in Germany, a lawsuit deals with the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People, which was ratified in Germany in March 09. The plaintiff is a woman who has lived independently with personal assistance for all her life. The Hanseatic city Hamburg (one of the German federal states) has now denied her the budget for her personal assistance and instead only wants to pay for nursing home occupancy costs. The legal basis is a law that denies ambulant treatment in case the placement of the disabled person into a nursing home is “agreeable“ and “appropriate“ and in case the ambulant treatment costs a considerable amount more. The plaintiff says that this means a violation of article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons. Article 19 guarantees independent living and community living. It states that persons with disabilities have the opportunity to choose their place of residence and where and with whom they live on an equal basis with others and are not obliged to live in a particular living arrangement.
The Hanseatic city Hamburg says that the Convention is not a superior law. Additionally, personal assistance was not needed in this case to avoid segregation because, after all, the nursing home was an appropriate home. The plaintiff’s legal representative states that confinement to a nursing home against the will of a person is a wrongful deprivation of the person’s freedom.