The disability justice framework was developed in 2005 by disabled queer and trans activists of color, including Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, Stacey Milbern, Leroy Moore and Eli Clare. Berne and Moore co-founded the performance project Sins Invalid, which published the movement's 10 principles. Those principles include intersectionality, leadership of the most impacted, collective access and recognizing wholeness.
The framework grew from a critique of the mainstream disability rights movement. That movement won landmark laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, but its leaders were mostly white, and it focused on legal rights and access. Disability justice argues that ableism is tied to racism, capitalism and gender oppression, so legal rights alone cannot free disabled people.
In practice, disability justice shapes mutual aid networks, accessible organizing and policy fights. Advocates point out that disabled people are overrepresented among people killed by police, and that eugenics and forced sterilization targeted disabled people of color. During the COVID-19 pandemic, disability justice organizers pushed back against care rationing that ranked disabled lives as less worth saving.