Disability Law Commons^™

Screened Out Of Housing: The Impact Of Misleading Tenant Screening Reports And The Potential For Criminal Expungement As A Model For Effectively Sealing Evictions, Katelyn Polk

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Having an eviction record “blacklists” tenants from finding future housing. Even renters with mere eviction filings—not eviction orders—on their records face the harsh collateral consequences of eviction. This Note argues that eviction records should be sealed at filing and only released into the public record if a landlord prevails in court. Juvenile record expungement mechanisms in Illinois serve as a model for one way to protect people with eviction records. Recent updates to the Illinois juvenile expungement process provided for the automatic expungement of certain records and strengthened the confidentiality protections of juvenile records. Illinois protects juvenile records because it …

Four Pathways Of Undermining Board Of Trustees Of The University Of Alabama V. Garrett, Derek Warden

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

In Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett, the Supreme Court held that Title I of the ADA did not validly abrogate state sovereign immunity; and as such, a plaintiff could not obtain damages against the states or sue the states directly for injunctive relief. Many courts and scholars have read Garrett as sounding the death knell for ADA Title I government employee plaintiffs. This article shows that such fears are misplaced. Indeed, this article offers four pathways around Garrett that show Title I and its requirements are very much alive and well. First, the article shows …

Disability Rights And The Discourse Of Justice., Samuel Bagenstos

Articles

Although the ADA has changed the built architecture of America and dramatically increased the visibility of disabled people, it has not meaningfully increased disability employment rates. And the statute continues to provoke a backlash. Disability rights advocates and sympathizers offer two principal stories to explain this state of affairs. One, the “lost-bipartisanship” story, asserts that disability rights were once an enterprise broadly endorsed across the political spectrum but that they have fallen prey to the massive rise in partisan polarization in the United States. The other, the “legal-change-outpacing-social- change” story, asserts that the ADA was essentially adopted too soon—that the …

Recognizing The Need For Mental Health Reform In The Texas Department Of Criminal Justice, Kara Mchorse

St. Mary's Law Journal

The ways in which mental health care and the criminal justice system interact are in desperate need of reform in Texas. The rate of mental illness in Texas is higher than the current state of mental health care can provide for. While state hospitals were once the primary care facilities of those with mental illness, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has taken on that role in the last few decades; and when the criminal justice system becomes entangled with mental health care, it often leads to “unmitigated disaster.” If Texas continues to allow the TDCJ to act as …

Disability Rights And The Discourse Of Justice, Samuel R. Bagenstos

SMU Law Review Forum

Although the ADA has changed the built architecture of America and dramatically increased the visibility of disabled people, it has not meaningfully increased disability employment rates. And the statute continues to provoke a backlash. Disability rights advocates and sympathizers offer two principal stories to explain this state of affairs. One, the “lost-bipartisanship” story, asserts that disability rights were once an enterprise broadly endorsed across the political spectrum but that they have fallen prey to the massive rise in partisan polarization in the United States. The other, the “legal-change-outpacing-social-change” story, asserts that the ADA was essentially adopted too soon—that the legislative …

Law In The Time Of Covid-19, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Books

The COVID-19 crisis has ended and upended lives around the globe. In addition to killing over 160,000 people, more than 35,000 in the United States alone, its secondary effects have been as devastating. These secondary effects pose fundamental challenges to the rules that govern our social, political, and economic lives. These rules are the domain of lawyers. Law in the Time of COVID-19 is the product of a joint effort by members of the faculty of Columbia Law School and several law professors from other schools.

This volume offers guidance for thinking about some the most pressing legal issues the …

Table Of Contents, University Of The District Of Columbia Law Review

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Disability Rights Past, Present And Future: A Roadmap For Disability Rights, Marcy Karin, Lara Bollinger

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”)2 “was and is all about civil rights.”3 Enacted in 1990, its goal was to prohibit discrimination based on disability across society, from employment to places of public accommodation and government services. As the byproduct of bipartisan support and significant advocacy and leadership by members and allies of the disability community, there were high hopes that the ADA would live up to its goal. Unfortunately, that reality never came to pass for many individuals with disabilities. Instead, a line of Supreme Court decisions in 1999 and 2002 imposed increasingly narrow interpretations of the law’s core …

Debilitating Southeastern Community College V. Davis: Achieving The Promise Of Disability Civil Rights, Leslie Francis

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

Disability civil rights law today continues to be shaped by troubling precedent created in initial decisions of the Supreme Court under the Rehabilitation Act. This article explores the first of these decisions, Southeastern Community College v. Davis, demonstrates Davis’ continuing impact, and analyzes how this impact may be addressed. Davis was a suit brought by a hearing-impaired student who had been refused accommodations and denied admission to the College’s nursing program. Critical litigation decisions on behalf of Davis at the trial court did not contest the College’s failure to provide accommodations that are common today, such as sign interpretation, or …

Challenging Transition-Related Care Exclusions Through Disability Rights Law, Kevin Barry

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

Despite the growing visibility and acceptance of transgender people, discrimination against them persists.1 Transgender people are routinely denied identity documents that accurately reflect their sex.2 They are excluded from service in the U.S. military and from the protections of state civil rights laws.3 They are fired from their jobs, evicted from their homes, turned away from homeless shelters, denied custody of their children, harassed by law enforcement, and deprived of access to appropriate single-sex services in schools, prisons, and immigration detention centers—because they are transgender.4

Diversity And Inclusion In The American Legal Profession: First Phase Findings From A National Study Of Lawyers With Disabilities And Lawyers Who Identify As Lgbtq+, Peter Blanck, Ynesse Abdul-Malak, Meera Adya, Fitore Hyseni, Mary Killeen, Fatma Altunkol Wise

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

This article presents initial, descriptive findings from the first phase of a national study, with a planned longitudinal component, conducted in collaboration with the American Bar Association (“ABA”).1 With representation from all U.S. regions and states, as well as the District of Columbia, the study examined lawyers with diverse backgrounds, with a primary focus on lawyers who identify as having health conditions, impairments, and disabilities, and on lawyers who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or as having other sexual orientations and gender identities (“LGBTQ+” as an overarching term). Importantly, the investigation also considered the intersectional nature of these …

What Can The Protection And Advocacy Network Offer To Our Veterans?, David A. Boyer

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

The desire to compensate veterans predates the establishment of the United States (“U.S.”). In 1636, individuals with disabilities received pensions for defending the Plymouth colony against Native Americans.1 Throughout history, this practice continued, as documented by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”).2 By 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed the Executive Order 5398, which created the Veterans Administration.3 Prior to President Hoover’s signing of that executive order, the available veteran services were divided by three separate governmental agencies: the Veterans’ Bureau, the Pensions Bureau, and the Soldiers’ Home.4 Consequently, that executive order combined all three agencies into one that concentrated …

Should Veterans Disability Compensation Be Conditional Upon Veterans Working Towards Rehabilitation And Return To Employment?, Heather Ansley, Aniela Szymanski

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has experienced dramatic increases in its budgets since September 11, 2001.1 Increasing federal deficits during this time has led Congress to seek spending cuts, causing tensions in efforts to ensure that a declining veteran population receives the quality benefits and services they earned through years of service.2While the number of veterans in the United States has steadily been declining due to veterans of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam dying,3 the number of veterans receiving disability compensation has risen dramatically due to injuries sustained by service members in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and …

Conditional Parentage Is The New Eugenics, Dr. Yael Efron, Dr. Pnina Lifshitz-Aviram

Child and Family Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Baker Act: Time For Florida To Get Its Act Together, Alexander Lemieux

Child and Family Law Journal

No abstract provided.

May Hospitals Withhold Ventilators From Covid-19 Patients With Pre-Existing Disabilities? Notes On The Law And Ethics Of Disability-Based Medical Rationing, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Law & Economics Working Papers

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the threat of medical rationing is now clear and present. Hospitals faced with a crush of patients must now seriously confront questions of how to allocate scarce resources—notably life-saving ventilators—at a time of severe shortage. In their protocols for addressing this situation, hospitals and state agencies often employ explicitly disability-based distinctions. For example, Alabama’s crisis standards of care provide that “people with severe or profound intellectual disability ‘are unlikely candidates for ventilator support.’” This essay, written as this crisis unfolds, argues that disability-based distinctions like these violate the law. The Americans with Disabilities Act, the …

Pups, Paperwork, And Process: Confusion And Conflict Regarding Serviceand Assistance Animals Under Federal Law, Rebecca J. Huss

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Free Battered Texas Women: Survivor-Advocates Organizing At The Crossroads Of Gendered Violence, Disability, And Incarceration, Cathy Marston Phd

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

This article recaps my symposium presentation, where I argue that feminist organizing strategies are central to healing our society and creating restorative justice from my perspective as a survivor of occupational injury, battering, and criminalization for self-defense. This includes the creation of Free Battered Texas Women. We prefer to think of ourselves as survivor-advocates who use a variety of tactics to empower ourselves, incarcerated battered women, and citizens. These strategies include pedagogy; poetry and other written forms; art; and legislative advocacy. I blend this grassroots activism with feminist disability theory, radical feminist theory, feminist ethnography, and feminist criminology.

The Hidden Disability Consensus In The 2020 Campaign, Harold A. Pollack, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

At this writing, the final results of the Iowa caucuses remain unreported. No one yet knows which candidates did well and which did poorly. We do know that health policy is a defining cleavage between left and liberal Democrats this primary season. Much of the press coverage will naturally focus on the implications of this vote for Democrats’ commitment to an incremental public option or a full-throated single-payer plan.

Olmstead V. L.C.: The Supreme Court Case, Samuel R. Bagenstos, Irv Gornstein, Michael Gottesman, Jennifer Mathis

Articles

You have an incredible luxury here at Georgetown Law. You have faculty who are engaged in the world like two of my colleagues on this panel. To my immediate left is Professor Michael Gottesman (Georgetown University Law Center) who argued the case on behalf of Lois and Elaine, and to my next far left, Professor Irv Gornstein (Georgetown University Law Center) who argued the case on behalf of the United States. Between them is Jennifer Mathis (The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law) who has spent, I think, most of her career at the Bazelon Center litigating, and organizing, and …