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Perceived Disabilities, Social Cognition, And "Innocent Mistakes", Michelle A. Travis

Vanderbilt Law Review

Employment discrimination takes many more forms than the current models in our antidiscrimination laws explicitly recognize. As new forms of employment discrimination are identified, courts must decide whether or not to apply our existing statutes, which many continue to believe were narrowly constructed to focus primarily on conscious acts of prejudice. Litigants have had more success challenging that notion with respect to Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (the "ADA"), because Congress was relatively clearer about the multifaceted nature of disability discrimination. Legislators openly acknowledged that disability discrimination may result not only from invidious animus, but …