Attack of the Morally Challenged: Congress goes after the disabled

• Published in: On the issues 1996-07, Vol.5 (3), p.36
• Main Author: Pelka, Fred
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Discrimination; Employment; People with disabilities; Workers with disabilities
• ISSN: 0895-6014

Now the ADA is under attack, not only in congress, but from conservative think tanks, TV news programs, and open pages. Critics charge the ADA is too soft-hearted and too expensive. They call it "a costly crutch" and "the Attorneys' Dream Act." Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has labeled the ADA "a dumb use of resources," while House majority leader Dick Armey blasts it as "a disaster" and "an abomination." While largely modeled on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the ADA also included provisions never before seen in a civil rights act. Because segregation against people with disabilities is often enforced by physical barriers such as stairs (as opposed to "Whites Only" signs), the law includes the concept of "reasonable accommodation." For example, it requires employers to modify the work environment for their disabled employees, unless such modification is an "undue hardship" requiring "significant difficulty or expense." The disabled employee must, of course, be "otherwise qualified," that is, capable of doing the job despite their disability. The ADA example from its provisions businesses with fewer than 15 employees, religious groups, private clubs, and private homes. It also excludes from its protection people who are active drug or alcohol abusers, pedophiles, voyeurs, compulsive gamblers, kleptomaniacs, pyromaniacs, or anyone suffering from a host of other "disorders." ANOTHER FAVORITE DEMON OF ADA-BASHERS IS THE "barrage" of "frivolous" lawsuits they say are filed under the act. James Bovard, writing in the July 1995 American Spectator, complains that the ADA has "turned disabilities into valuable legal assets, prizes to be cultivated and flourished in courtrooms for financial windfalls." He then runs down a list of "lunatic claims" that includes "aging stewardesses" suing Delta Airlines over its employee weight guidelines; a 360-pound woman who sued a movie theater for $1.5 million because its seats couldn't accommodate her; a professor who claimed "that she had been denied tenure because she suffered from a illness that results in lethargy and decreased productivity," and so on.