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Discrimination

Selected Works

Michelle A. Travis

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Law

Gendering Disability To Enable Disability Rights Law, Michelle Travis Dec 2016

Gendering Disability To Enable Disability Rights Law, Michelle Travis

Michelle A. Travis

This Article expands the social model of disability by analyzing the interaction between disability and gender. The modern disability rights movement is built upon the social model, which understands disability not as an inherent personal deficiency but as the product of the environment with which an impairment interacts. The social model is reflected in the accommodation mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 ("ADA"), which holds employers responsible for the limiting aspects of their workplace design. This Article shows that the limitations imposed upon impairments result not only from physical aspects of a workplace but also from other …


Disqualifiying Universality Under The Americans With Disabilities Act Amendments Act, Michelle Travis Dec 2014

Disqualifiying Universality Under The Americans With Disabilities Act Amendments Act, Michelle Travis

Michelle A. Travis

This Article reveals a new resistance strategy to disability rights in the workplace. The initial backlash against the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) targeted protected class status by characterizing the ADA's accommodation mandate as special treatment that benefitted the disabled at the expense of the nondisabled workforce. As a result, federal courts treated the ADA as a welfare statute rather than a civil rights law, which resulted in the Supreme Court dramatically narrowing the definition of disability. Congress responded with sweeping amendments in 2008 to expand the class of individuals with disabilities who are entitled to accommodations and …


Telecommuting: The Escher Stairway Of Work/Family Conflict, Michelle A. Travis Dec 2001

Telecommuting: The Escher Stairway Of Work/Family Conflict, Michelle A. Travis

Michelle A. Travis

This Article was part of a symposium issue on Law, Labor, and Gender. This interdisciplinary project responds to legal scholars in the work/family conflict field who advocate telecommuting as a way for women to achieve workplace equality. First, the Article uses sociology research to demonstrate that telecommuting sometimes works to exacerbate gender inequality in the workplace, rather than leveling the workplace playing field. Second, the Article explores what role, if any, the law may play in requiring employers to design gender-equalizing telecommuting relationships. By analogizing telecommuting to the historic use of women industrial homeworkers, the Article concludes that targeted homeworking …