[NFBOH-Cleveland] The GOP Wants To Gut The Americans With Disabilities Act

[Suzanne Turner]

02/22/2018 02:36 pm ET 


The GOP Wants To Gut The Americans With Disabilities Act


 <https://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/laura-dorwart> 

 <https://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/laura-dorwart> Laura Dorwart

Guest Writer



undefined undefined via Getty Images 

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<https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/miscellaneous/cb12-134.ht
ml> Nearly 20 percent of the U.S. population is disabled. This means that
the ADA - the Americans With Disabilities Act, which was passed in 1990
under President George H.W. Bush's administration - protects the basic
rights of almost 60 million disabled Americans.  

My husband ― a quadriplegic wheelchair-user since a spinal cord injury in
his 20s, a father to our 6-month-old and a professor at Oberlin College ―
has found the ADA to be invaluable to our family's ability to participate
equally in society. In the U.S. House,
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/house-passes-changes-to-americans-
with-disabilities-act-over-activists-objections/2018/02/15/c812c9ea-125b-11e
8-9065-e55346f6de81_story.html?utm_term=.e4f96e4a164a> 213 Republicans and
12 Democrats took a step toward making our everyday lives a lot harder by
voting "yes" on H.R. 620 on Feb. 15.

Misleadingly named "
<https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/620> The ADA
Education and Reform Act of 2017," H.R. 620 is posited as legislation that
would prevent frivolous lawsuits against business by removing incentives to
comply with accessibility laws. But in actuality, the new bill could
potentially strip away access to a number of Americans living with
disabilities. 

Much of the support for the measure and its under-the-radar, low fanfare (at
least in mainstream media coverage) passage relied on widespread public
inattention to and ignorance about the ADA's significance to disabled
populations. Rationalizations for H.R. 620 belie either a fundamental
misunderstanding or willful misrepresentation of both the ADA and the bill
aiming to gut it.

Dismantling the ADA doesn't just hurt disabled people and their families. It
hurts all of us.

 In a nutshell,  <https://www.ada.gov/> the ADA protects the rights of
disabled individuals to participate in public life and access government
services. A landmark piece of legislation and the
<http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/ada/> most comprehensive set of
protections for the disabled population in U.S. history, the bill includes
specific accessibility guidelines for businesses, particularly in the event
of new construction or remodeling. The ADA sought to eliminate
discrimination and to provide a legal incentive for government agencies and
private businesses to address areas of inequality for the disabled.

This new bill largely dismisses the reality that the heart of the ADA isn't
about legal action at all. The ADA
<https://www.teenvogue.com/story/hr-620-could-put-disability-rights-at-risk>
does not provide for monetary compensation beyond legal fees. The goal of an
ADA lawsuit is not financial reward, but steps toward equality by compelling
the business or organization in question to provide accommodations for the
disabled. 

H.R. 620 fundamentally weakens the ADA at its core and imposes an even
greater burden on disabled people who encounter barriers to access. The
disabled individual in question would now have to lodge a specific written
complaint with the business violating the ADA, detailing the changes that
need to be made for their particular accommodations. The business
<https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/620/text> would
have 60 days to respond to acknowledge receipt, and would have another 120
days to provide proof of "substantial improvement" toward accommodations,
which is so vaguely worded that it's difficult to enforce or evaluate.

Thus, while H.R. 620's
<https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/bill-that-would-try-an
d-stop-drive-by-ada-lawsuits-passes-us-house> proponents claim that it
untangles "red tape," that's the opposite of its likely outcome for the very
population the ADA was written to protect, adding months of exhaustive labor
and bureaucracy-defying logistical feats to our plates without promising a
favorable outcome.

H.R. 620 sets up a bogeyman in order to quietly roll back basic rights under
the guise of protecting small businesses. The bill's
<https://psmag.com/social-justice/congress-is-close-to-gutting-a-key-provisi
on-of-the-ada> primary backer is the International Council of Shopping
Centers and any claims from this group that it's merely attempting to
prevent exploitation and frivolous lawsuits should be viewed with, to put it
kindly, heavy suspicion. Retail lobbyists were some of the ADA's strongest
opponents when it first passed, and that hasn't changed.



yacobchuk via Getty Images 

The ADA allows my husband to be an effective parent, to go to work, to
drive, and to enter public spaces for the purposes of everything from food
shopping, education and medical care to recreation, exercise and
socializing. It's the primary factor in my husband's financial independence
because he can't work somewhere if he can't park, use the restroom or get in
the door. For many disabled people (for example, wheelchair users who drive
wheelchair vans), an absence of accessible parking spaces means not going
anywhere at all.

Disability rights activists fought valiantly against the attempt to
dismantle the ADAour rights, with
<https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2018/02/15/house-approve-changes-ada/24727/
> many ADAPT protesters arrested or removed while demonstrating at the
Capitol building and in the House gallery on the day of the vote on H.R.
620. ADAPT condemned the passage of the bill,
<http://adapt.org/adapt-condemns-the-passing-of-the-hr-620-bill-in-the-house
/> writing that "the House decided that the burden of getting justice for
discrimination against people with disabilities lies with the victim."

It noted that "more than 500 disability rights organizations sent letters to
Congress opposing the bill." Now, ADAPT is shifting its attention to the
Senate, where it is trying to prevent a companion bill from being
introduced.

The ADA has, for many, meant the difference between between second-class
citizenship (or worse) and equality; between institutionalization and
independent living; between poverty and the right to establish oneself
financially. H.R. 620 is not so much an addendum or an amendment but a total
rollback of the ADA, or at least its most valuable components.

The ADA provides vital support to an
<http://www.disabilitycanhappen.org/chances_disability/disability_stats.asp>
increasingly disabled society, in which almost all of us will experience
disability, whether our own or a loved one's, over the course of our lives.
Dismantling the ADA doesn't just hurt disabled people and their families. It
hurts all of us.

Laura Dorwart is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California-San Diego
with an MFA from Antioch University. Her website is www.lauradorwart.com
<http://www.lauradorwart.com/> .

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