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Full-Text Articles in Law
Lashing Back At The Ada Backlash: How The Americans With Disabilities Act Benefits Americans Without Disabilities, Michelle A. Travis
Lashing Back At The Ada Backlash: How The Americans With Disabilities Act Benefits Americans Without Disabilities, Michelle A. Travis
Michelle A. Travis
This Article applies Professor Derrick Bell's interest convergence hypothesis to the disability context. By identifying how the ADA benefits nondisabled workers, this Article challenges the notion that advancing equality for individuals with disabilities necessarily comes at the expense of the nondisabled workforce. Many scholars have documented the socio-legal backlash against the ADA, particularly the ADA's reasonable accommodation mandate. This backlash is fueled in part by a belief that the ADA is a form of social welfare, rather than an antidiscrimination law, and that the accommodation mandate requires affirmative action or preferential treatment, rather than merely ensuring equal employment opportunities. More …
The Pda's Causation Effect: Observations Of An Unreasonable Woman, Michelle A. Travis
The Pda's Causation Effect: Observations Of An Unreasonable Woman, Michelle A. Travis
Michelle A. Travis
While many scholars rightfully have critiqued the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (“PDA”) as falling short of achieving the ultimate goal of equal employment opportunities for women, this Article reveals one of the PDA’s most important successes. By recognizing pregnant women as a “given” in the workplace, the PDA launched a quiet revolution in the way that judges make causal attributions for adverse employment outcomes. Specifically, the PDA provided judges with the conceptual tools that were needed to help shift causal attributions to an employer, rather than attributing a pregnant woman’s struggles in the workplace to her own decision to become a …