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 …

Pleading Disability, Joseph Seiner

Faculty Publications

A significant failure. That is how the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") has been described by legal scholars and disability advocates alike. The statute was widely expected to help prevent disability discrimination in employment, but it has not fully achieved its intended purpose because of the narrow interpretation of the ADA by the courts. Congress recently sought to restore the employment protections of the ADA by amending the statute. Interpreting the complex and comprehensive amendments to the ADA will be a difficult task for the federal courts. Complicating matters further, the proper pleading standard for disability claims was left in …

Generalizing Disability, Michael Ashley Stein

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Hostile Environment Actions, Title Vii, And The Ada: The Limits Of The Copy-And-Paste Function, Lisa A. Eichhorn

Faculty Publications

Two federal circuits, borrowing from Title VII jurisprudence, recently recognized a cause of action for a disability-based hostile environment under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Neither opinion, however, considered how the analysis of a disability-based hostile environment claim under the ADA might differ from that of a race- or sex-based hostile environment claim under Title VII. This Article examines the differing theories of equality underlying the two statutes and argues that, because the statutes prohibit discrimination in fundamentally different ways, courts must resist the temptation to copy and paste Title VII doctrine into ADA hostile environment opinions. This Article …

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 …

Empirical Implications Of Title I, Michael Ashley Stein

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reasonable Accommodations And Awkward Compromises: Issues Concerning Learning Disabled Students And Professional Schools In The Law School Context, Lisa A. Eichhorn

Faculty Publications

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, colleges and universities are prohibited from discriminating against qualified students with learning disabilities and must reasonably accommodate such disabilities so that students have a genuine opportunity to complete academic programs successfully. Not surprisingly, just like their non-disabled peers, a number of learning disabled college graduates are choosing to enter professions such as law and medicine. Their entry into professional schools has raised a number of legal issues concerning their qualification to matriculate, their need for accommodations, and their eventual ability to practice successfully. …