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Sacramento County meeting: resident raises civil‑rights concerns over proposed autism registry, chair offers follow‑up meeting
Summary
At the Board of Supervisors’ April 23 public comment period, a Sacramento County resident raised concerns about a purported federal disease registry for autistic people, alleging potential privacy and civil‑rights harms and calling for county action. The chair offered a private follow‑up meeting; no board action was taken during the meeting.
During the off‑agenda public comment period at the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors meeting on April 23, a resident identified as Lashawn Gores raised concerns about a reported federal effort to create a disease registry she said would track autistic people using health and device data.
Gores, who said she is an autistic Sacramento County resident, told supervisors she had heard reports that the registry would include Medicare and Medicaid records, pharmacy medication data, lab tests, veterans’ records, insurance claims and data from smartwatches and fitness trackers. She said the registry could violate privacy rules and posed a potential civil‑rights risk for disabled people. "This registry of autistic people could be used in the future to, for the federal government, hunt down autistic people and send them off to camps like they did in Nazi Germany," Gores said during a public comment that included strongly worded concerns about privacy, civil rights and rhetoric she described as eugenicist.
Supervisor Serna invited Gores to meet with his staff and offered that up to one other board member could join a follow‑up meeting. No formal board discussion or action followed the public comment, and the board did not adopt any measure related to the registry during the meeting.
Clarifying note: The speaker described reports and concerns; the county did not present or reference any official federal program or specific rule during the meeting. The transcript record shows the board offered to follow up with the speaker by meeting with staff to learn more.
