A North Carolina prison denied Edward Womble, a prisoner with a hearing disability, a hearing-aid battery (and thus a functional hearing aid) for nine months. During that time, he was excluded from receiving aural overhead announcements, including calls for meals and religious and medical events, because of his disability.

Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) bars discrimination by public entities, providing that “no qualified individual with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by any such entity.” That bar creates an affirmative obligation on public entities to provide accommodations that allow people with disabilities to meaningfully access public services, programs, and activities. The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that Title II’s nondiscrimination mandate applies to all public entities, including state prisons. And the statutory text is clear: medical care is a service under Title II.

Nonetheless, the district court below dismissed Womble’s failure-to-accommodate ADA claim because, it said, that claim was actually challenging inadequate medical treatment. Womble appealed, and in September 2026, CAC filed an amicus brief in the Fourth Circuit supporting his claim. Our brief makes three principal points.

First, there is no textual carveout that excludes prison medical care from Title II’s broad prohibition on disability discrimination. Second, even if there were such a carveout, Womble’s request for a hearing-aid battery was an intervention to accommodate his hearing disability under Title II (and thus restore his access to overhead announcements), not medical treatment at all. Finally, the district court erred in invoking a line of cases stemming from a 1996 Seventh Circuit decision, Bryant v. Madigan, which first posited an atextual, “judge-made” carveout for prison medical care.  That carveout is plainly at odds with Title II’s broad statutory ban on discrimination in any public “service, program, or activity.”