Law Commons^™

Judicial Threats To Olmstead And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Jean Mangan, Andrea L. Dennis

Scholarly Works

The authors examine the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Olmstead v L.C. ex rel. Zimring and related Supreme Court rulings that could raise questions about the Americans With Disabilities Act's guarantee of care in integrated settings and about which governmental entity's interpretation should be respected when deciding whether a state has met its integration obligation. After reviewing statutes, administrative regulations, and judicial decisions, the authors conclude that Olmstead's integration mandate will likely stand, but actions should be taken to codify the rule in federal and state statutes so that governmental agencies will continue to have the authority to ensure compliance …

Cyborgs And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Lou Colasanti

Student Scholarship

Medical technology is advancing at lightning speed with the potential to drastically benefit the disabled. These new technologies will result in humans who will use a wide array of assistive technologies and will likely be labelled as Cyborgs. Assistive technologies such as self-driving cars, robots, computer chip implants, insertable medical hardware, and exoskeletons are already well developed. The day is rapidly approaching when Cyborgs as a class will be large and influential. Critically, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the judges tasked with enforcing this legislation, and the legislature itself are all ill equipped to handle the speed of this …

Taking Disability Public, Jasmine E. Harris

All Faculty Scholarship

Anti-discrimination laws enforce the idea that no one should be forced or encouraged to hide their race, gender, sexuality or other characteristics of their identity. So why is disability rights law the glaring exception? Other areas of anti-discrimination law have eschewed forms of enforced privacy about protected classes and, as a result, re-frame privacy norms as problematic, antigenic, and, at times, counter to structural reform goals. In contrast, disability rights law values privacy norms to preempt discrimination; in other words, if you never reveal the information, no one can discriminate against you because of that information. This Article argues that …

The Impact Of The Americans With Disabilities Act On Legal Education And Academic Modifications For Disabled Law Students: An Empirical Study, Donald H. Stone

All Faculty Scholarship

Law schools face the challenge of providing disabled students with reasonable accommodations in their academic setting in a fair and equitable manner. Disabled law students continue to demand academic modifications in course examinations by claiming to be persons with mental or physical disabilities. Law schools are also beginning to see requests for extension of time for degree completion, priority in course registration, and authorization to tape record classes, all by virtue of an entitlement under the mandates of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Persons with a wide range of disabilities are seeking academic modifications from their law schools. What …

Working And Poor: The Increasingly Popular Practice Of Excluding Disabled Employees From Health Care Coverage, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

One might think, since passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA),' that the employment story for disabled employees or would-be disabled employees was cheerful, or at least improving. This may be true in so far as obtaining and retaining employment is concerned;' however, the ADA, because it permits employers and third-party insurers to continue to utilize traditional risk management techniques, has resulted in reduced or (in some cases) non-existent employee benefits for the disabled. At the same time, more and more employers are opting to self-insure under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA),3 in …

"Equal Members Of The Community": The Public Accommodations Provisions Of The Americans With Disabilities Act, Robert Burgdorf

Journal Articles

Nearly three decades ago, four black students sat down at a lunch counter in a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina, ordered a cup of coffee, and refused to move until they were served. I Unknown to the four young men at the time, their act of courage would help precipitate a series of sit-in protests and other forms of civil disobedience challenging racial segregation at lunch counters, restaurants, parks, hotels, motels, and other facilities. The desegregation of such places was a principal objective of civil rights protests, lawsuits, and proposals for legislative reform during the early 1960s.2 Equal opportunity …

The Americans With Disabilities Act: Analysis And Implications Of A Second-Generation Civil Rights Statute, Robert L. Burgdorf Jr.

Journal Articles

Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote that our nation's civil rights laws were a "sparse and insufficient collection of statutes ... barely a naked framework."' On their faces, many federal civil rights statutes constitute little more than broad directives that "Thou shalt not discriminate." Broadly worded statements outlawing discrimination were the optimal approach to statutory draftsmanship in light of the controversial nature of the civil rights laws passed in the 1960s and 1970s. The drafters of these statutes needed to craft language that would be palatable to a majority of the members of Congress while still having a meaningful impact …