Dealing with Discrimination Against the Handicapped
The law at that time required federal employers to make an accommodation for the disabled, even if the accommodation required money and required other employers to make an accommodation it did not require money. The incident was reported many years ago when I lived in Colorado and was even before the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. Does discrimination against the handicapped still exist today? You bet it does.
The website, www.spannj.org, recently reported at attempt to purchase a single-family home in New Jersey to become the home of for four adults with disabilities and a mentor. “Concerned citizens,” however, including the mayor, were strongly opposed to the idea. They said such a facility does not belong in a residential facility, although the mayor said he did not have anything personally against the disabled. That sounds strangely to me like people once said when refusing to rent a house to a certain race. I wonder how many residents of that New Jersey town have children with special needs. It sounds like discrimination against the handicapped to me.
In March 2001, by Psychology Today, as reported on the website, www.findarticles.com, “despite legislative efforts, discrimination against the handicapped is everywhere. A report in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that a quarter of the disabled workers had experienced social and economic discrimination.” The worst hit were those with such problems as shyness and depression.
Even before the Americans With Disabilities Act it was illegal to ask health questions on an employment interview and then deny an individual a job, unless the particular health condition identified could be tied to hindering the ability to do a job. It was illegal to deny the rental of an apartment to a person with a disability, like blindness, but a lawyer told me it happened all the time.
The federal government in 1990 enacted the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 to provide more protection to the disabled and to shield them from such discrimination. The act recognized that 43,000,000 Americans may have one or more physical or mental disabilities, and that number is increasing as the population ages. The act was designed to provide a clear and comprehensive prohibition of discrimination against the disabled. The act recognized that discrimination still existed in such areas as employment, housing, public accommodations, education, transportation, communication, recreation, institutionalization, health services, voting, and access to public services. That act stated that unlike those who had experienced other types of discrimination, the handicapped who had experienced such discrimination had no recourse.
The law passed in 1990 does many things, including prohibiting labor unions, state and local government agencies, and employment agencies from discriminating against qualified job applicants with disabilities in hiring, firing, advancement, compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment. The ADA also covers employers with 15 or more employees, including state and local governments.
Under the act, a person is recognized as disabled if he or she has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one of life’s activities, has a record of such impairment, or is regarding as having such impairment. In Title I, a qualified individual is considered one who, with or without reasonable accommodation can perform the essential functions of a job in question. Reasonable accommodations can include making existing facilities accessible; job restructuring, modifying work schedules, or reassigning to a different job; or acquiring or modifying existing equipment or devices adjusting or modifying examinations, training materials or policies and providing qualified readers and interpreters.
An employer is required to make a reasonable accommodation, if the accommodation would not cause an undue hardship. Such things as the size and financial resources of the employer would be considered as to whether an accommodation would require and undue hardship.
No employer is required to lower quality or production standards to make an accommodation.
The law gave additional rights that the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1974 did not provide.
Title II prohibits discrimination against in public services, including transportation, and Title III prohibits discrimination in public accommodations operated by private entities. The law is designed to provide, if enforced, almost every community facility and service available to those who are not disabled.
Those who think they might have been the victim of discrimination as a disabled person may contact the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission at www.eeoc.gov.
Discrimination against the handicapped is not only illegal, it is also morally wrong. Because it was so long ago, and to protect the privacy of the individual who was discriminated against, who was not a public figure, I did not mention the name of the man who was fired or the government agency that fired him. I will say, if he had not gotten his job back, not only would the government agency have been in the wrong, but it would have lost a skilled worker. I will say that if someone refused to rent to someone because of the color of his skin, it would be considered wrong. It is equally wrong to deny someone the chance to rent an apartment because of being blind or the chance to buy a house because the disabled would live there.
