27 June 2008
In 1990 George Bush #1 passed the Americans With Disabilities Act, a landmark event. Since that time the Supreme Court has issued decisions that eroded the broad protections that Congress meant to establish. leaving millions of Americans with no recourse or remedy for discrimination. I have a major bone to pick with the Supreme Court and many of it’s partisan rulings, but that’s for another blog, another time. With a vote of 402 to 17 the House passed a major civil rights bill which would overturn some of those picky Supreme Court decisions and would allow disability to be “construed broadly,†to cover more physical and mental impairments. It will allow workers to more easily prove discrimination because in some states, people with ailments held at bay with medication, are not considered disabled because their conditions can be controlled by medication. Medication or not, the disability is still there.
The new bill is more important now because of the large numbers of Iraqi vets returning home with serious injuries, including the loss of limbs and head trauma.†Now that the House has passed it’s bill, the Senate is expected to pass a similar bipartisan measure. The bill will create opportunity, put people to work and will provide new pools of talent. Under the wording of the new bill, an impairment is a disability if it “materially restricts†activities like seeing, hearing, eating, walking, reading or thinking.
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