WASHINGTON, Sept 25, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — Landmark Disability Legislation Reverses Supreme Court Decisions

The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), the largest cross-disability membership organization in the U.S., commends the signing into law of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 Thursday by President George W. Bush.

“Today President Bush has followed in his father’s footsteps and taken a stand for equal opportunity and full participation for all Americans. I deeply appreciate the bipartisan leadership in the Congress that brought us to this point, and I thank President Bush for his leadership in signing this critical civil rights law that will make a real difference in the lives of millions of Americans with disabilities and chronic health conditions,” said Andrew Imparato, President and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities.

The law, which was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate and by voice vote in the House earlier this month, restores civil rights to Americans with disabilities in the workplace. The legislation also overturns four Supreme Court decisions that have inappropriately narrowed the protections of the ADA.

AAPD hails this monumental event as a civil rights landmark that brought together the disability and business communities to work on this historic bipartisan legislation.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush on July 26, 1990. However, in the eighteen years since its passage, decisions made by the Supreme Court have so narrowed the definition of disability under the ADA as to effectively shut out scores of people with a variety of disabilities from the civil rights protections in the workplace.

The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), the country’s largest cross-disability membership organization, organizes the disability community to be a powerful voice for change – politically, economically, and socially. AAPD was founded in 1995 to help unite the diverse community of people with disabilities, including their family, friends and supporters, and to be a national voice for change in implementing the goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). To learn more, visit the AAPD website: www.aapd.com

Copyright (C) 2008 PR Newswire. All rights reserved End of Story

WASHINGTON — Congress gave final approval on Wednesday to a major civil rights bill, expanding protections for people with disabilities and overturning several recent Supreme Court decisions.

The voice vote in the House, following Senate passage by unanimous consent last week, clears the bill for President Bush.

The White House said Mr. Bush would sign the bill, just as his father signed the original Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990.

The bill expands the definition of disability and makes it easier for workers to prove discrimination. It explicitly rejects the strict standards used by the Supreme Court to determine who is disabled.

The bill declares that the court went wrong by “eliminating protection for many individuals whom Congress intended to protect” under the 1990 law.

Read more

By Debra Cassens Weiss

The Senate passed a bill yesterday to expand workplace protections for people with disabilities.

The legislation is similar to a bill passed in June by the House, Reuters reports. Minor differences between the two bills are expected to be ironed out quickly so a final version can be sent to President Bush.

The bill, S. 3406, provides that a person may be disabled even though measures such as medication, prosthetics and assistive technology are used to mitigate the disability, report Reuters and Washington Labor & Employment Wire, a blog sponsored by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

The legislation was intended to override Sutton v. United Airlines, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that mitigating measures should be considered when determining whether a disability exists, according to an analysis of the bill by the Heritage Foundation.

However, the bill provides that ordinary eyeglasses and contact lenses may be considered in determining disability, recognizing that mild visual impairments are not disabilities, the Heritage Foundation analysis says.

Both the House and Senate bills again define a disability as a physical or mental impairment that “substantially limits” one or more major life activities, the Reuters story says. They increase the number of activities covered, add a category of bodily functions and continue to allow lawsuits for employer violations.

The bill’s chief sponsor, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said the Supreme Court had through a series of rulings interpreting the ADA cut down on protection for the disabled.

“The erosions of rights created by these court cases have created a bizarre Catch 22 where people with serious conditions like epilepsy or diabetes could be forced to choose between treating their conditions and forfeiting their protections under the ADA, or not treating their conditions and being protected,” Harkin said.

The Heritage Foundation contends the bill will increase the regulatory burden on employers. It prefers the Senate measure to the House bill, which would define “substantially limits” to mean “materially restricts.” The foundation contends that definition is unclear and could sweep minor impairments into the law’s protections.

Andrew Imparato, head of the American Association of People with Disabilities, applauded the Senate’s passage of the bill. “This is the most important piece of disability legislation since the enactment of the ADA in 1990,” he told Reuters.