Disability Law Commons^™

Big Data And The Americans With Disabilities Act: Amending The Law To Cover Discrimination Based On Data-Driven Predictions Of Future Illnesses, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

While big data holds great promise to improve the human condition, it also creates new and previously unimaginable opportunities for discrimination. Employers, financial institutions, marketers, educational institutions, and others can now easily obtain a wealth of big data about individuals’ health status and use it to make adverse decisions relating to data subjects.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal law that prohibits employers and other public and private entities from discriminating against individuals because of their disabilities. This chapter argues that in the era of big data, the ADA does not go far enough. While the ADA …

Corrective Justice And Title I Of The Ada, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

Several recent studies have shown that employment discrimination plaintiffs filing lawsuits in federal court under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) win only approximately five percent of their cases. This Article argues that this phenomenon is attributable at least in part to the ADA's very flawed definition of the term "disability." It suggests that the current definition be abandoned and that a new approach be adopted, one that would reshape the ADA's protected class so that it more closely resembles a discrete and insular minority, such as those traditionally protected by the civil rights laws. While Title …