A Christian group in Washington state on Tuesday announced a potentially landmark legal settlement that could establish new legal protections for harm reduction services for people experiencing drug addiction, including syringe exchange, under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The ADA has previously been used to preserve access to addiction treatment, and in particular access to medications like methadone and buprenorphine. But the settlement in Lewis County, Wash., sets a precedent in federal law that the ADA applies not just to treatment, but also to harm reduction services, which aim to help drug users preserve their health and reduce risk without demanding abstinence.
As part of the settlement, Lewis County lawmakers voted on Tuesday to repeal a 2024 ordinance that had banned the religious group, Gather Church, from operating its mobile syringe exchange. As a result of the stringent county regulations, participation in the program had dropped from roughly 400 people each month to just 11.
“We’ve set precedent in this court and put other counties and jurisdictions on notice,” said Malhar Shah, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s disability rights program. “You can’t prevent people who use illegal drugs from getting help, or from getting access to lifesaving services in the form of needle exchange programs.”
Gather Church was founded in 2010 as a local ministry explicitly focused on helping vulnerable neighbors. While it holds weekly worship services on Saturday evening, its members and its pastor, Cole Meckle, largely focus on providing aid to those in need through its food bank and a slate of addiction-related services including a medication-assisted treatment clinic and a syringe exchange program.
In 2024, however, Lewis County passed a zoning ordinance that restricted Gather Church from operating its mobile syringe exchange; barred it from distributing test strips for fentanyl or xylazine; and prohibited it from operating within 750 feet of a school, library, or public park. Supporters of the ordinance cited concerns about the disposal of used syringes as a driving motivation for the effort, and one county commissioner who voted in favor has previously posted on social media that he believes syringe exchange without the restrictions constitutes “legalized enablement.”
Gather Church responded by suing the county, gaining representation from the ACLU and the law firm Kaplan and Grady. On Dec. 31, David Estudillo, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, issued a preliminary ruling that Gather Church was highly likely to succeed in its lawsuit alleging that Lewis County’s ordinance violated both state and federal law.
Instead of allowing the case to proceed to a trial scheduled for late 2027, Lewis County opted to settle, pay $500,000 in attorney’s fees, and allow Gather Church to resume its harm reduction offerings in full. On Tuesday in Chehalis, Wash., the Board of County Commissioners voted to formally rescind the ordinance.
The Americans with Disabilities Act bars discrimination against people with disabilities, but includes a drug-use exemption, meaning it does not prevent employers or other institutions from discriminating against individuals based on their drug use.
Within that exception, however, exists an even narrower protection: It remains illegal to discriminate against people on the basis of receiving treatment or health services related to their addiction.
In his ruling, Estudillo noted that syringe exchange programs are highly effective in preventing the transmission of infectious disease and argued that they constitute “health services or services in connection with drug rehabilitation” — essentially, that denying access to syringe exchange would constitute a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Estudillo also wrote that restricting the operation of the syringe exchange likely violated the church’s First Amendment rights, noting that Lewis County officials had not questioned the sincerity of the group’s view that the harm reduction services are a core component of its religious practice.
“By halting Lewis County’s discriminatory ordinance, the court recognized the civil rights of faith-based and secular harm-reduction providers who deliver lifesaving health care and dignity to people all too often marginalized by their communities,” said David Howard Sinkman, a Kaplan and Grady attorney who helped bring the case on Gather Church’s behalf.
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