Shredding paper. Folding laundry. Utahns with disabilities work segregated, repetitive jobs — and the DOJ may sue over it.

Staci Christensen always looked forward to her shift at the Golden Corral.

She worked as a line attendant at the front of the buffet restaurant every weekend, greeting customers and giving them the drinks they ordered. Christensen, who has Down syndrome, said she felt the job let her use a lot of her skills.

“I’m able to do so much,” the 35-year-old woman said. “And I’m meant to do a lot of things.”

But that job was just a single weekly shift, and Christensen wanted to work more. So during the week, she participated in a vocational program run by a business that has a contract with state officials. Under federal law, Utah is required to provide jobs and programming for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The work there, Christensen said, was less satisfying: She worked in a warehouse setting, surrounded by different groups of people with disabilities doing repetitive tasks throughout the day — like sorting books and preparing some for recycling, or separating foam from other materials. It’s one of several jobs, she said, where she’s felt isolated.

“I just felt like I was being kept hidden from the real world,” Christensen said. “… I should be out in the real world more often and people shouldn’t be afraid of me. And they should be able to accept the fact that I’m as real as it gets and I’m just like everyone else.”

“I have a disability,” she added, “but I choose to not let that define me. I’m still a person.”

The U.S. Department of Justice shares Christensen’s criticism — after a three-year investigation, it has found the state is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by relying too heavily on programs that keep these Utahns away from the community, and instead congregate them with few chances to interact with nondisabled people.

That includes contracting with programs where people work in warehouse-like settings doing repetitive tasks, like where Christensen worked — called “sheltered workshops.” And in some of these programs, Utahns with disabilities are paid below minimum wage.

And that’s once they even get into these programs. The DOJ report found that Utah has a yearslong waitlist for people with disabilities to receive services, including employment help. Disabled Utahns are waiting an average of 5.4 years to get services from the Division of Services for People with Disabilities, and as of June, there are more than 900 people on the division’s waitlist who want help with getting a job.

For years, advocacy groups have tried to alert state officials that Utah was funneling people with disabilities into segregated settings during the day, rather than helping them within the community. But little changed, and in March 2021, federal investigators began examining the state’s program after the DOJ received a complaint.

Utah’s Disability Law Center said it’s pleased the DOJ is taking action now, and encouraged the state to make changes.

“It is time,” its statement reads, “for state leaders across Utah recognize that people with disabilities have the right to receive services in integrated settings in all aspects of their lives.”

The federal agency has threatened to sue the state. Officials with Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services — which provides services to people with disabilities — said they plan to work with the DOJ to improve and to prevent litigation.

“While nobody likes hearing that their programs still have barriers for people to receive services,” the department said in a statement, “the state of Utah sees people with disabilities as critical citizens in our state and is committed to improving our service system so that people with intellectual disabilities can live their lives in the way many of us do, as independently as possible, alongside family, friends and peers.”

What a ‘sheltered workshop’ looks like

At a newly built warehouse space on the west end of Ogden, groups of workers with disabilities sit at blue tables lined up in rows in the large, airy space. Several are focused on disinfecting trays, while others are working that day stapling cardboard placards to small plastic bags filled with parts.

In another room, workers examine expiration dates on Coca-Cola cans — dumping out the soda that’s expired, and wiping down the cans that are still eligible to be repacked and sold. One man smiles as he carefully squiggles lines of hot glue on the flaps of a Cactus Cooler 12-pack box before folding the ends together.

They work at EnableUtah, a nonprofit organization that receives state funding, along with contracts from businesses to have this type of labor done.

“We work with individuals to help them,” said Gavin Hutchinson, EnabledUtah’s CEO. “What we do is we teach them the work, and provide them job opportunities while we’re trying to find them jobs in the community.”

But these are the types of settings which often keep people with disabilities sequestered and away from nondisabled people, according to the DOJ.

Those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (referred to in the report as people with “I/DD”) want to work and spend their days in their communities, the DOJ report says. And with the right support, they say Utahns with disabilities can find jobs in typical workplaces for the same pay as those who are not disabled — and they can spend their free time doing things like shopping, taking exercise classes or meeting up with a friend at a restaurant.

Right now, some of the programs which offer Utahns with disabilities ways to spend their time during the day are structured in a way where they sit in large groups and color, watch TV or sit idle, the DOJ found.

“On paper, Utah offers all the services that people with I/DD need to spend their days fully integrated into the community,” the DOJ report reads. “But in practice, it is difficult for people with I/DD to access these services in integrated settings. Instead, Utah funnels people with I/DD into segregated settings to get services.”

There are three different Utah agencies that offer employment and day services: the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation, the Division of Services for People with Disabilities and the Utah State Board of Education. But the DOJ found that people with disabilities struggle when seeking out jobs within the community because it’s difficult to navigate the system as they are moved back and forth between these agencies — which investigators found don’t always communicate or work together.

This failure to coordinate, the DOJ found, has led to Utah officials providing job help primarily in segregated settings, when they should be helping people be out in the community as much as they can be.

A ‘fairer opportunity’ or ‘exploitation’?

Hutchinson said EnableUtah does work to connect people with jobs in the community — but not everyone wants to work out in public. He recalled a conversation he had with a woman where he asked if they could help her find a community job. She didn’t want to.

When he asked why, she said, “Because I’m made fun of out there. Here, I’m with my friends. I’m one of the smart ones. And I’m comfortable here.”

EnableUtah is providing a service to people who share her preference, Hutchinson said — but he worries the state could respond to the DOJ report by eliminating sheltered workshops. Several other states have phased out these sheltered settings.

He believes Utah could instead improve its services by having a single office that helps someone with a disability, rather than having services spread across several agencies. And he thinks the state could do more to incentivize businesses to hire those with disabilities, so more community-based jobs would be available.

Hutchinson’s nonprofit is one of nine programs in Utah that pay people with disabilities below minimum wage, which here is $7.25 an hour. While 13 states have passed legislation to eliminate such pay schedules, Hutchinson said the flexibility in Utah offers a “fairer opportunity for pay based on efficiency.”

He estimated that 37% of his workers are paid below minimum wage. Hutchinson explained that the organization determines wages based on output — if a nondisabled worker is able to package 10 widgets in a 50-minute period, management may decide that work is worth $10, a dollar for every package. If a person with a disability packages four items in that same time period, he said, they would make $4. Hutchinson said this allows workers more autonomy.

“The goal is always to get them to increase that efficiency,” he said. “It’s a motivator, right? That you know what, I work faster, I can make more [money].”

Not everyone agrees that this practice helps those with disabilities. That includes Matthew Wappett, who is the executive director of the Utah State University Institute for Disability Research, Policy & Practice. He said paying those with disabilities below minimum wage is “exploitation of a population that cannot advocate for themselves.”

“If we really believe that people with disabilities are important, valuable members of our community, then they should be compensated fairly,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to go build cardboard boxes for 25 cents an hour. Thankfully, I have a choice. I have a choice where I want to work, and I have the ability to go and advocate for myself. A lot of times people with disabilities don’t always have those supports.”

Wappett said Utahns with disabilities are often coming out of high school and into state services, where they aren’t given a choice or chance to work anywhere else but a sheltered workshop. They haven’t been able to work other jobs, like most people do in their teenage and young adult years, which helps them figure out what type of work they like to do.

“A lot of people with disabilities aren’t even given that chance,” he said. “…They just graduate, and then they’re put in a sheltered workshop.”

‘I just want to be accepted’

It’s been a few years since Christensen was working at that sheltered workshop in Orem. She’s had other jobs since then, and now works at KFC.

She recalled in a recent interview how, earlier that day, there was a lot going on at the Utah County location where she works — management had come in to look at how everything was running, and there were a lot of people moving around.

But she stayed focused on making biscuits, and got her job done.

Christensen has learned a lot working both in the community, and in jobs where she felt she was more hidden away, she said. She has a passion for food, and wants to become a chef. She wants that kind of responsibility — instead of jobs that center around, as she said, the “very disgusting” work of cleaning up after people when they’re done eating.

She wants to see more chefs who would take part in cleaning dishes, and doing the type of tasks that may currently be done by work groups of people with disabilities. Christensen said it can be tiring to work with people who think this kind of work is beneath them.

She wants to work in a place where she is valued.

“I just want to be accepted and just like, accept me for who I am,” she said. “Because I can only do my very best.”