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Toward Universalism: What The Ada Amendments Act Of 2008 Can And Can't Do For Disability Rights, Kevin M. Barry

Kevin M Barry

The social model of disability teaches that it is society’s treatment of impairments, not the impairments themselves, which limit people. But this model permits two different approaches to civil rights coverage: protect only some (the “minority group” approach) and protect all (the “universal” approach). While some scholars suggest that the ADA’s protected class of people with “disabilities” constituted an abandonment of the universal approach to coverage, this Article argues that the ADA’s three-pronged definition of “disability” embodied a tension between the minority group approach (in its first and second prongs) and the universal approach (in its “regarded as” prong). Although …

Crossroads And Signposts: The Ada Amendments Act Of 2008, Jeannette Cox

Indiana Law Journal

Although the apparent purpose of the 2008 amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is solely to broaden the ADA 's protected class, the manner in which the amendments achieve this purpose erodes the statute's explicit textual support for understanding persons with disabilities as a politically subordinated minority. The amendments also strengthen the statutory link between the biological severity of a person's disability and that person's right to sue for ADA accommodations. Accordingly, for some courts, the amendments will reinforce the perception that the ADA differs from traditional civil rights law.

Federal courts' understanding of the ADA 's relationship …