Rights advocates to crawl up Supreme Court steps Jan. 13

Jan. 6, 2004 — Disability rights activists are planning to crawl up the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court at 9 a.m. next Tuesday morning, Jan. 13, the day oral arguments are scheduled to take place in the case Tennessee v. Lane.

“The event is intended to illustrate the humiliation George Lane and others have been forced to endure,” saysADAWatch, which announced the event yesterday. Lane, one of the plaintiffs, had to crawl up the stairs to a Tennessee courtroom because the courthouse, like many in Tennessee, was not accessible, in violation of Title 2 of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Lane and Beverly Jones sued Tennessee for failing to obey the ADA, whose Title 2 requires access to local and state government services. Both were denied access to courtrooms. Beverly Jones worked as a court reporter; George Lane was a defendant in a criminal case. “The state arrested Lane for ‘failure to appear’ when he refused to crawl or be carried up the stairs,” says the Bazelon Center, one of the many disability rights groups filingamicus briefs in the case.

Lane and Jones filed suit under Title 2 of the ADA in 1998. “The Tennessee Attorney General moved to dismiss the case on sovereign immunity grounds, arguing that Congress did not have the authority to subject the state of Tennessee to suit. The U.S. District Court denied the state’s motion and ruled that the case could go forward. The Tennessee Attorney General appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which affirmed the trial court’s decision, and again said that the case could proceed. The Tennessee Attorney General then appealed again – this time to the United States Supreme Court. Five years after filing their lawsuit, Lane and Jones have yet to have their day in court,” says Bazelon.

The case, says ADAWatch, “questions Congress’s authority to enact the ADA under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. . . If the Court does not take this opportunity to uphold Title 2 of the ADA under Section 5, federal disability laws that are just beginning to enable disabled persons to participate in critical facets of American life will be undermined before the goal of full integration has been achieved.”

That evening, from 6-7:30 p.m., at the Gewirz Student Center of the Georgetown University School of Law,(12th Floor, 120 F St., NW), a forum of disability rights legal experts is scheduled to “summarize oral arguments and provide insights as to what conclusions savvy observers of the Supreme Court draw from the day’s proceedings.” For more information call the American Constitution Society at (202) 393-6181 or e-mail info@acslaw.org)

ADA Watch’s amicus brief, filed along with Hon. Dick Thornburgh, the National Organization on Disability and the American Association of People with Disabilities is online in PDF form at http://bazelon.org/issues/disabilityrights/lane/

For more information:

Jim Ward
ADA Watch
202-661-4722

Supreme Court to Hear Disabilities Act Title 2 Case from Tennessee

June 24, 2003 — The U. S. Supreme Court has agreed to take a case in which Tennessee argues that states have immunity from claims brought under Title 2 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. “The justices’ decision to accept the case was almost a foregone conclusion,” wrote the New York Times’ Linda Greenhouse in her June 24. story. “Three times before, including this term, the court had accepted a case that raised the same question. But in two cases, the parties dismissed the case before the court could rule, and in the other, the justices failed to resolve the question.” Last July, ruling in the case State of Tennessee v. George Lane and Beverly Jones, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said that the state was not immune from damages claims under Title 2 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In February, 2001, the Court had ruled in University of Alabama v. Garrett that states were immune from damages claims under Title I of the law. This case would ask the Court to issue a similar decision for Title 2 of the Act. The case, filed in 1998, concerns George Lane and Beverly Jones on behalf of disabled Tennesseeans who could not access county courthouses due to architectural barriers. Title 2 of the ADA requires state and local goverment services to be accessible. Lane, wrote Greenhouse, “crawled up two flights of stairs for his arraignment on misdemeanor traffic charges, and was later arrested for ‘failure to appear’ and jailed when he refused to repeat the ordeal when it came time for a pretrial hearing. “The other plaintiff, Beverly Jones, is a certified court reporter who needs access to courtrooms to do her job. She was unable to enter four county courthouses where lawyers had hired her to record the proceedings. Her legal complaint listed 23 Tennessee counties with inaccessible courthouses despite the requirement of Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act that public ‘services, programs or activities’ be made accessible to people with disabilities.” The question before the Court is: Did Congress have the constitutional authority to require states to pay money damages for violations of Title 2 of the ADA? “A negative ruling might suggest that Congress did not have the power to enact many of the core provisions of Title 2,” says ADA Watch. “California advocates, following their success in stopping the Hason appeal, have volunteered to help the Tennessee community implement a campaign similar to the one that led to their victory,” says ADA Watch’s Jim Ward. ADAWatch is urging Tennessee’s disability community to contact the state’s governor, attorney general and solictor general “and ask that they withdraw this appeal and support our civil rights,” says Ward. Lane became an amputee in 1996 as the result of a traffic accident. When he was was cited later for driving with a revoked license, he arrived at the Polk County Courthouse only to find he couldn’t get up the stairs. “The deputies and other personnel just kind of stood there and watched him as he crawled up to the courtroom,” Lane’s attorney William J. Brown told reporters in Aug, 1998, when Lane and paraplegic court reporter Beverly Jones filed suit against Polk Co., Tenn. and two dozen other Tennessee counties under Title 2 of the Americans with Disabilities Act for failing to make courthouses accessible. “Every time I’m carried up the steps, I lose my independence, and I’m not being treated equally,” Jones told reporters when the suit was filed. A freelance court reporter with two teen-age children, Jones said that in order to work in Clay County, she had to be carried up an old, steep staircase. In Jackson County, Jones said she is scared her “ride” will slip and fall. “Most of Tennessee’s counties use courthouses built more than a century ago, when few architects considered the needs of people with disabilities,” reported the Associated Press. Read the Sixth Circuit opinion. For more background or sources on this topic, contact: Jim Ward ADA Watch 202-661-4722 Jim4Ward@aol.com

Sacramento settles sidewalk case, avoiding Supreme Court

June 27, 2003 — The U.S. Supreme Court without comment rejected the appeal by Sacramento to overturn the Ninth Circuit ruling that city sidewalks were covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and therefore have to be accessible

The city of Sacramento just a few days earlier had agreed to settle the lawsuit brought by disabled activists over access to city sidewalks. Under the terms of the settlement agreement the city will assign 20 percent of its transportation funds for the next 30 years to improve sidewalks, crosswalks and curb ramps. The settlement also calls for the city to pay up to $795,000 in attorneys’ fees, as well as $10,000 to each of the eight named plaintiffs.

The Sacramento City Council unanimously approved the settlement during a closed-door meeting. The case, known as Barden v. Sacramento, had worried activists nationwide who feared that, if the Supreme Court took the case, the Americans with Disabilities Act might be curtailed further.

Read story in Sacramento Bee

Sidewalks are covered by disabilities act, says White House atty

June 3, 2003 — “Laying and maintaining a network of walkways, or sidewalks, for pedestrians to move about is one of the first and most elementary functions of a municipality,” wrote U.S. Solicitor General Theodore B Olson, the White House attorney, urging the Supreme Court last week to deny Sacramento’s request that the high court hear a case on whether “sidewalks” must be made accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“Providing and upkeeping a network of walkways for pedestrians to get around town is a quintessential, not to mention ages old, government service.”

In March, the high court had sought the administration’s views on the issue. Sacramento, joined by over 200 other cities, asked the Court late last year to hear its appeal in a case it had lost at the Ninth Circuit, in which disabled individuals had sued the city for failing to install curb ramps or to maintain them, saying it refused to remove obstacles –benches, sings, wires protruding from walkways — that made sidewalks impassable or dangerous, and that it had refused to even develop the “transition plan” required the law. The case, which has been in litigation for years, is now close to settlement. The Court has not yet announced whether it will take the case.

In the brief, the Solicitor General argued that the Ninth Circuit opinion was “correctly decided,” and that it did not conflict with any prior Supreme Court decisions or opinions in other circuits — thus, there was no reason for the high court to hear the case.

Activists who have been watching the case, called Barden v. Sacramento, expressed hope that, based on the Justice Department’s brief, the Court would now refuse the case, keeping the ADA Title 2 out of the high court for now. A number of advocates praised the administration for its views on the matter — that “sidewalks are for everyone.”

In the lawsuit and in the appeal to the Supreme Court, Sacramento and other cities argue that sidewalks are not a “service” of governments as defined by the ADA.

Not true, said the Justice Dept.; ADA regulations clearly provide “that newly constructed or altered sidewalks and intersections must include curb ramps” — citing 28 C.F.R. 35.151(e). And while this may indeed incur costs for cities, it said, “in enacting the ADA, Congress made a determination that the societal benefits of promoting community access to those with disabilities outweigh the societal costs of complying with the ADA.”

Earlier, Lex Frieden, head of the National Council on Disability, a government agency, had urged Olson to advise the Court that the ADA covered sidewalks. Frieden added, “Substantial federal funding is available for making sidewalks accessible to people with disabilities,” citing The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), which authorized the use of Surface Transportation Program funds for the installation of “pedestrian walkways,” and the modification of public sidewalks to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“In addition,” said Frieden, “public responsibility for making sidewalks designed and built with public funds accessible to people with disabilities did not begin with the ADA or the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Technical guidance on making sidewalks accessible has been available since 1961.”

Read Frieden’s letter

More on the Barden case

Read “Disabled gain key ally in ADA suit” by Michael Doyle from the May, 30 Sacramento Bee

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For more background or sources on this topic, contact:

Melissa Kasnitz
Staff attorney
Disability Rigts Advocates
510-451-8644
mkasnitz@dralegal.org

Title 2 ADA threat lessened; Court may dismiss case

March 7, 2003 — The state of California filed a formal motion on Monday to the U.S. Supreme Court to withdraw the case Medical Board of California v Hason. Today the Court called off the oral arguments which had been slated for March 25 — and the case may be dismissed.

March 4, 2003 — A threat to the Americans with Disabilities Act was averted Friday night when the Medical Board of California voted 14-1 to withdraw its “petition for certiori” to the Supreme Court and ask it not to proceed with Medical Board of California v Hason. The Court was scheduled to hear the case March 25. Disability activists had been pressing public officials to drop the case. On Thurs., Gov. Gray Davis wrote to the board asking it to withdraw the appeal, calling the ADA “a cornerstone of our nation’s civil rights protections.” Read letter.

“The disability community in California has made history,” says organizer HolLynn D’Lil, who spearheaded the opposition. Disability activists turned out in force at all 4 meeting sites where the medical board was meeting to vote on the issue. The sites were hooked to each other by teleconference.

Activists began mobilizing to get the state to drop the case months ago, pressuring public officials. In a letter sent Feb. 21 to the director of the state medical board, Calif. Atty Gen. Bill Lockyer urges the group to withdraw the case. “It is my belief as Attorney General that the greater public interest of the State of California would be furthered by a withdrawal of the petition for certiorari in this matter,” he wrote. Read letter.

Disability advocates nationwide were worried about the effect of a Supreme Court ruling in this TItle 2 ADA case. The Supreme Court agreed to take the case in order to rule on the constitutionality of Title 2 of the ADA. Title 2 relates to public services. In a letter that same day to the board, Calif. Health and Human services Agency Sec. Grantland Johnson and Calif. Rehab Dept. Director Dr. Catherine Campisi wrote that “the pending appeal threatens the protections afforded by Title 2,” and that it “would undermine the progress the nation has made in disability public policy.”

The move by the state to withdraw its appeal is highly unusual, say court experts, and say the state will still have to move for dismissal of the case in order for it not to proceed at the Supreme Court level.

Read “State drops disability case” from The San Francisco ChronicleRead story on Ragged Edge magazine website

Visit ADAwatch.org

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For more background or sources on this topic, contact contact Jim Ward
jim@adawatch.org
202-329-5877

Celebrating ADA’s 11 years — with lawsuit settlements

Note to readers: links to news articles may not work after a few weeks, as news media remove current stories to their archives. The link may take you to the archives section, where, for a fee, you can view the article.

July 24, 2001 — Thursday, July 26 marks the 11th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Around the country, groups of disability advocates plan to celebrate with rallies, picnics and speeches. Other advocates are celebrating the settlement of major lawsuits.

The past year has seen an increase in lawsuits to enforce the 11-year-old law, many of them class-action suits against companies and services that were supposed to have stopped discriminating against disabled people a decade ago.

Last week (July 17), The Associated Press’s Catherine Wilson reported on a settlement in which The May Department Store Co.’s 430 stores agreed make their aisles, fitting rooms and restrooms accessible (story online athttp://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010717/bs/may_ada_2.html ) The suit had been brought by Access Now Inc., a disability-rights group from Florida. (Other disability groups charged the settlement does not go far enough; the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Chern Yeh Kwok reported in a June 19 story, available through the Post-Dispatch archives at http://home.post-dispatch.com/channel/pdweb.nsf/pages/SimpleSearchPage )

The same day, lawyers for Access Living, Chicago’s Independent Living Center, announced a settlement with the Chicago Transit Authority, which the group had sued for failing to comply with the ADA’s requirements to make its bus service accessible. Broken elevators, broken lifts, buses that did not stop were among the problems CTA will now have to rectify. (Story available athttp://www.raggededgemagazine.com/drn/drnctasetlement071701.htm )

In a June 14 decision, a federal judge ordered Macy’s West to establish 32-inch minimum pathways between clothing racks in its flagship San Francisco store so that disabled shoppers could navigate; the suit had been brought by Disability Rights Advocates (http://www.dralegal.org/) of Oakland.

Two months earlier, Disability Rights Advocates had settled another major class-action suit, this one against HMO giant Kaiser Permanente, which had been sued for discriminating against disabled patients (story from the New York Times (registration required) athttp://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/13/national/13DISA.html?ei=1&en=f018e58b7c4b2343&ex=988171706&pagewanted=print).

A good place to watch for stories of such lawsuit filings — and settlements — is the Yahoo news page on “Disabilities and The Disabled” athttp://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/fc/WORLD/Disabilities_and_the_Disabled

More E-Letters

Disabled bus riders must get next-day service, says Court

A U.S. District Court has ruled that people with disabilities using special “paratransit” services have the same right as nondisabled people using public transit to “next-day” service. The Court upheld Dept. of Transportation rules requiring transit companies to schedule next-day service for people using its paratransit service who had requested it. Philadelphia’s public transit system “may not rely on its own inadequacies to justify its noncompliance with the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act,” said the court Jan. 8 in a strongly-worded decision.

“This means persons with disabilities are entitled to paratransit rides the next day, just as nondisabled persons get bus service when they want it. It means that a Court has recognized that violation of the federal regulation is discrimination of a civil right,” says attorney Steve Gold, who handled the lawsuit for Liberty Resources, a Philadelphia independent living center.

The decision was another victory, says Gold. The court allowed an organization, Liberty Resources, to serve as plaintiff in the case — there were no individual plaintiffs. Liberty Resources provided “an undisputed record that shows a concrete and particularized injury, specifically, expending their own time and resources in a range of ways,” said the court.

The U.S. Department of Justice “filed an extremely helpful and persuasive amicus brief” in the case, said Gold. Read that brief at http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/septabr.htm

Story from Philadelphia Inquirer Jan. 18, 2001. Read story.

 

Clinton Administration Opposed the ‘ADA Notification Act’

Excerpts of a letter from U.S. Asst. Atty. General Robert Raben to Rep. Charles Canady (R. – FL) Chairman, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Committee on the Judiciary

Posted May, 2000

I am writing to you to express the Administration’s opposition to H.R. 3590, the ADA Notification Act.

The proposed legislation would prohibit individuals from bringing lawsuits to enforce title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)without first providing notice of the alleged violation to the defendant and then waiting 90 days for the defendant to take corrective action. We believe that this proposed legislation would work to undermine voluntary compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and that it would unduly burden legitimate ADA enforcement activity. . . .

To the extent that other businesses have adopted a policy of “foot-dragging” or “wait and see,” they should not be rewarded. Certainly, they should not receive an unfair competitive advantage over businesses that have already complied in good faith with the law. Nor should Congress take steps to encourage businesses not to move toward ADA compliance until legal action is threatened. This would create disincentives for voluntary compliance

With the assistance of the Internal Revenue Service, we notified, each year for seven years, over six million businesses of their ADA responsibilities and how to obtain information on how to comply. Our toll-free ADA Information Line, established in 1994, received more than 100,000 calls in Fiscal Year 1999.

In addition, we have published and disseminated 40 technical assistance documents, including approximately 500,000 copies of the ADA Guide for Small Businesses. All of our technical assistance documents are available 24 hours a day through our Fax-on-Demand system or on our ADA Home Page on the Internet, which was viewed at least six million times last year.

In addition we have provided funds to several trade associations to develop and disseminate industry-specific guides for hotels and motels, grocery stores, restaurants, builders and contractors, medical professionals, child care providers, and small businesses generally. We sent a packet of 33 ADA educational documents to approximately 6,000 Chambers of Commerce and placed an ADA Information File, containing 94 ADA publications in 15,000 local public libraries.

Since 1991, the Department of Education has funded ten regional Disability and Business Technical Assistance Centers, which provide training and technical assistance to businesses in their communities.

Robert Raben Assistant Attorney General

The ADA: At a Critical Point

Posted March, 1999

The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in April on four cases whose outcomes will profoundly shape not only the nature of the Americans with Disabilities Act but of our country’s very understanding of what it means to be a “person with a disability.”

“We are at a critical point,” says Matthew Diller, associate professor of law at Fordham University who has written on Social Security Disability law. “By July, either all these problems will have been corrected, or the ADA will become a very narrow law.”

Three of the four cases examine what “disability” means under the ADA and in the context of work, said Diller. The other asks “whether a person getting disability benefits can even sue under the employment provisions of the ADA”: The reasoning here, says Diller, is that if you’re getting benefits, that’s tantamount to admitting that you can’t work — so it’s a moot point that you’re being discriminated against in employment, since you’ve already admitted you can’t work!

“These are terrible cases,” he says.

“Several years ago, we all started saying that disabled people were losing an awful lot of ADA cases,” said Linda Krieger, assistant professor of law at Boalt Hall who organized a meeting there in March, 1999, bringing together disability lawyers and academics to discuss the problem. What was particularly troubling, she said, was that disabled people were losing cases in the courts of judges “who were very liberal on other civil rights issues.”

Judges were stopping the cases before they even got started, telling people they weren’t “disabled” as the ADA defined it, “and that they therefore didn’t have a right to use the law at all,” said Krieger.

Unlike the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which “came after a tremendous amount of mass consciousness-raising about race and racism, the ADA passed with very little understanding of what disability discrimination really is, said Krieger. The ADA is “was based on a socio-cultural model of disability that judges don’t understand,” said Krieger.

“Judges operate from an ‘impairment model’ or a “social welfare/benefits’ model. They keep asking whether the plaintiff is ‘sufficiently impaired’ to ‘deserve protection” under the ADA.”

The Americans with Disabilities Act — and the disability rights movement that spawned it — has at its core “a central premise both simple and profound”: that people called “disabled” by society are just people — not different in any critical way from other people,” said law professor Bob Burgdorf.

Burgdorf, who worked at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in the 1980s when the ADA was just a gleam in activists’ eyes, was responsible for a Commission report that formed the philosophical underpinning of the law.

Yet the courts, with what he calls “manifestly good intentions,” have interpreted and applied the law in ways “that reinforce a diametrically opposite premise.” In a 1997 Villanova Law Review article, “‘Substantially limited’ Protection from Disability Discrimination: The Special Treatment Model and Misconstructions of the Definition of Disability,” Burgdorf decried what he called the “special class” and “preferential treatment” mentality that has crept into the interpretation and enforcement of a law designed to ensure equality and integration.

“Legal analysis has proceeded quite a long way down the wrong road,” he said.

“Though we are conditioned to think otherwise, human beings do not really exist in two sharply distinct groups of ‘people with disabilities’ and ‘those without disabilities,'” Burgdorf said, echoing what he wrote the 1985 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report, “Accommodating the Spectrum of Individual Abilities.”

Disability is “a natural part of the human condition resulting from that spectrum – “and will touch most of us at one time or another in our lives.

“The goal is not to fixate on, overreact to or engage in stereotypes about such differences — but to take them into account” and allow for “reasonable accommodation for individual abilities and impairments that will permit equal participation.”

This, he said, is the real goal of the ADA. — to “provide equal opportunities for all Americans” — not to “identify a particular group of individuals who are entitled to some kind of special treatment.”

While the civil rights model has had some positive effects for the disability rights movement, said Krieger, it has come with baggage as well: in legal thought, “equal rights” equates with “equal treatment.”

The ADA presents a set of new ideas for people. “It’s particularly hard for people to understand the idea of “equality” behind the ADA, said Diller — that people have to, in fact, be treated differently sometimes in order to achieve equal rights.

To many judges, this seems akin to affirmative action or the “special rights” charge that is leveled by conservatives against all manner of efforts to extend social justice.

“If anyone thought the disability movement’s work was finished with the passage of the ADA” they are very very wrong, Diller said. “Disability rights holds the power to change the trajectory toward a cookie-cutter society,” he said. It has the potential “to transform society itself.”

To do that, though, “disability” itself must first be understood.

 

After 10 Years, The ADA is Changing the Landscape of America

BY WILLIAM G. STOTHERS

Posted July, 2000

The Americans with Disabilities Act is changing the landscape of America.

In the 10 years since being signed into law, people with disabilities now expect, as a popular bumper sticker proclaims, “to boldly go where everyone else had gone before.”

Success shines in ordinary things. Now I can go to the grocery store in my wheelchair and not be blocked by a turnstile. I can get on a bus that has a lift and go across town. I can go to a movie and not be limited to sitting in a corner at the back of the theater. I can go shopping and use an accessible fitting room. I can travel and find an accessible hotel room at my destination. I can go to the bathroom at the airport and use an accessible stall — if someone who is not disabled is not in there with his luggage.

Before the ADA not one of these activities was assured.

People with disabilities have much greater mobility. We are able to move about our communities easier, enter and use shops and restaurants and city and county buildings and facilities. We have more access to telecommunications via relay services and captioning services. The ADA applies also to programs offered to the public, from the SATs to professional licensing exams to recreational services.

But the ADA has not produced nirvana. Much has changed for the better, but much remains to be done.

Just in the past three months, my own experience is a good indicator:

• In St. Louis, where I was attending a conference, I needed transportation from my downtown hotel to a meeting a couple of miles away. My wife called the bus company to find out the best route. After a couple of calls she connected to a person who gave the information, but when she asked (out of old habit) if the bus was accessible, the answer was less than reassuring. She was told that “most people” tell the bus company ahead of time when and where they are going so they can make sure that a bus with a working lift will be on that route that day. All buses are supposed to have working lifts. WeÕre not supposed to have to call a day or more ahead, no more than any other citizen has to.In the end, my wife (a scooter user) and I rolled on the streets to our meeting. Even then we had to ride in the streets on occasion because several intersections along the way lacked curb cuts.
• In New York City, we were referred to an accessible hotel in the theater district. When we arrived, my wife was unable to get through the door of the so-called accessible room. The second room they offered was so small that we both could not get in at the same time.The hotel then offered to rent us two separate rooms.
• Last month, a county agency on aging honored us for our work in disseminating information about independent living for people with disabilities. The luncheon was wonderful until the awards were presented. You guessed it, the stage was inaccessible. The worst part was they didnÕt even seem to realize what they had done was not only rude and insensitive, but illegal as well.These things should not have happened. The law prohibits them. But enforcement, primarily the responsibility of the federal Department of Justice, is under funded. Individuals with disabilities end up having to pursue compliance on their own through the courts. But beyond the law, people should know better. People with disabilities are demeaned and discounted daily. We become angry, because we expect better. The ADA has raised our expectation for access and accommodation.

  One of the biggest expectations we have is access to employment. The unemployment rate for people with disabilities has been — and remains — at about 70 percent. The ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability. But we live in a society where people with disabilities are too often regarded as dependent and pitiable. What employer wants to hire such a person? Just this week, a story from Connecticut told of a woman with a disability who graduated at the top of her class in a double major of accounting and computer science. In a tight employment market, many of her classmates with lower academic standing were offered jobs before graduation. She is still looking.

  Still, on this 10th anniversary of the ADA, I am hopeful. The ADA is designed to include more Americans in the give-and-take of life. It specifically aims to achieve reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities without imposing undue hardship on anyone.

  Rome was not made accessible in a day. Ten years has given us only a start on transforming America. But it will happen. The landscape will continue to change. ThatÕs the American Dream.

  William G. Stothers is Deputy Director of The Center for An Accessible Society.

ADA Watch website provides advocacy tools to fight threats to ADA

July 26, 2001 — On the 11th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, disability rights advocacy groups launched adawatch.org to “respond to threats to the civil rights of people with disabilities,” according to ADA Watch’s Jim Ward.

The website has been designed as “an informational network and advocacy tool of the ADA WATCH coalition of disability rights organizations united to protect the ADA,” says the group.

The group says it is concerned about threats to the ADA, including the nomination of Ohio attorney Jeffrey Sutton to the 6th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals; February’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that Congress did not have the authority to allow state employees to sue the states for monetary damages under the ADA and proposed legislation in Congress to weaken the ADA including the ADA Notification Act introduced by Congressman Mark Foley (R-Fla) which requires a 90 day waiting period before people with disabilities can get their rights to equal access enforced, which adawatch.org says “would discourage voluntary compliance of the ADA and allow offenders to delay accommodations without consequence.”

With its emphasis on advocacy, the website contains online petitions for advocates to sign and other organizing materials.

Organizations involved in the ADAwatch.org website include ADAPT, American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Disability Rights Center, National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems, the National Council on Independent Living, the National Disabled Student Union and the National Organization on Disability.

Visit ADAwatch.orgADAwatch.org on the Jeffrey Sutton nomination

ADAwatch.org on the ADA Notification Act