Professor Takes the Offense in Defense of Those with Disabilities

If you’re looking for a crusader for justice when it comes to disability and accessibility, NSU Professor Matthew Dietz has the credentials. Since 2022, Dietz has been the clinical director of the Disability Inclusion and Advocacy Law Clinic in NSU’s Shepard Broad College of Law. His commitment to defending those with disabilities runs deep.

Throughout his life, Dietz has struggled with his own disability: a stutter.

“Because of my stutter, I was relentlessly teased, even by family,” he said. “I was embarrassed and tried to hide it as best I could. I carried over my own feelings about myself and my own disability to how I felt and how I treated others.”

Dietz defied opinion when he was told he couldn’t do certain things because of his speech impediment. He used the words of naysayers to motivate him to become a trial lawyer.

While he was studying at Brooklyn Law School, Dietz said, he was told there was no way he could ever become a trial attorney. Undeterred, Dietz was eventually selected for the school’s moot court team.

“It was one of my proudest achievements,” he said. “At that time, my wife Debbie bought me a framed poster with a dog seated at a table, eating a fancy dinner with a glass of red wine.  The caption reads, ‘Every dog has his day.’ It hangs in my office at the clinic today.”

Another inspirational piece of artwork that hangs in his office Norman Rockwell’s “Golden Rule.” The print depicts people from various cultures, religions and ethnicities who infuse the golden rule in their beliefs. “Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You,” it reads.

Dietz arrived at NSU in summer 2022, after two friends working at the clinic invited him to visit. Since coming to the campus and working with students here, Dietz says the opportunity has been so enjoyable he doesn’t mind his long drive from his home in Miami. He works with a legal clinic’s contingent of 10 students, but he is hoping to grow that number in the future.

Among their activities, he and his students work on discrimination cases, work with families on guardian advocacy matters and form collaborations with other colleges and divisions within NSU.

“My overarching goal of the clinic is to ensure that the college produces students who are competent to practice on day one,” he said. “My hope is that the connection between pure lecture classes and practice with actual clients ‘click’ and students can apply the law to real-life facts.”

Dietz began his career in the 1990s as an insurance defense lawyer, where he received his first exposure to inaccessibility claims and disability law, which was in its infancy as a law practice area. While handling a case, Dietz was referred to noted Miami attorney Edward Resnick. Resnick, a quadriplegic who contracted polio in 1954, grew frustrated with a lifetime of barriers to everyday access and forced businesses to adhere to the Americans with Disabilities Act when it became enforceable in the 1990s.

“Resnick opened my eyes to how others see a world that is inequitable by design and how disability rights laws were developed to create equity,” Dietz said. “When I went out on my own in 2001, I became more involved in the disability community in South Florida and discovered for myself the wide range of issues and inequity that people with disabilities deal with daily.”

In 2001, Dietz immersed himself in the Florida Bar’s efforts for diversity and inclusion and pressed to include disability into the definition of diversity. Eventually, he and his wife formed Disability Independence Group, a non-profit dedicated to advocating for increased opportunities for people with disabilities, primarily in the legal system.

Over the past 25 years, Dietz has handled hundreds of cases and been involved in more than 350 decisions. During that time, his disdain for civil rights indignities has grown.

“Most civil rights cases involving persons with disabilities are the result of carelessness, ignorance, indifference or thoughtlessness,” he said. “Once you see the inequity, you can’t ‘unsee it.’  I can’t go into a bathroom and not look at the grab bars in the accessible toilet stall or the fixtures on the sink. I scoff when I go to a large presentation and there is not a closed captioning on a screen.”

Among Dietz’s most notable cases:

• From 2012 to 2016, he represented several families and children who were medically fragile and were in nursing homes or at risk of being placed in nursing homes. The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against the state of Florida, and in 2023 received a judgment requiring the state to provide adequate services to medically fragile children.
• About 20 years ago, he forged an agreement in which all of Carnival Corporation’s vessels had to become physically accessible to persons with disabilities.
• In a series of cases, he represented Deaf patients against hospitals that denied ASL interpreters to develop the standard of “effective communication” in which is required for medical personnel to provide to Deaf patients.

Dietz notes that in addition to working with “eager and smart students,” the biggest benefit of coming to NSU is the opportunity to be in a college of law that is part of a larger university that provides interdisciplinary opportunities.

“Being a lawyer is not an end unto itself, it is a means to an end,” he said. “We live in a society where those who serve people with disabilities need to have an understanding of the law and the remedies that ensure jobs, housing, education or other benefits. Lawyers play a crucial role of facilitating that understanding and ensuring that these benefits are carried out.”

Posted 03/03/24