Disability Law Commons^™

Torts And Civil Rights Law: Migration And Conflict: Symposium Introduction, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Curiously, the connection between civil rights and civil wrongs has not been a topic that has captivated the attention of large numbers of legal scholars over the years. The distance that has developed between the two fields likely reflects their placement on opposite sides of the public-private divide, with Title VII and other anti-discrimination statutes forming part of public law, while torts is a classic, private law subject. To compound the division, both subjects are to some extent still under-theorized. Employment discrimination scholarship is often caught up in the process of analyzing the doctrinal implications of the latest Supreme Court …

Toward An "Unqualified" Otherwise Qualified Standard: Job Prerequisites And Reasonable Accommodation Under The Americans With Disabilities Acts, John E. Rumel

Articles

No abstract provided.

An Evaluation Of The Prospects For Successful Implementation Of The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities In The Islamic World, Brenton Kinker

Michigan Journal of International Law

This note will examine the CRPD’s aspirations in light of Islamic law, comparing whether the two are—or can be—consistent. Part I will provide background on the CRPD, including the intent of the treaty, the negotiations leading to the final wording, and the solid obligations it contains for state parties. Part II examines the background of Shari’a and its provisions regarding disability. Part III compares the treatment of the disabled under Islamic law with that required by the CRPD in order to gage consistency. Where tensions exist, alternative interpretations of both Islamic law and the CPRD are proposed that might facilitate …

The Tort Label, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Courts and commentators often label federal discrimination statutes as torts. Since the late 1980s, the courts increasingly applied tort concepts to these statutes. This Article discusses how courts placed employment discrimination law within the organizational umbrella of tort law without examining whether the two areas share enough theoretical and doctrinal affinities.

While discrimination statutes are torts in some general sense that they do not arise out of criminal law and are not solely contractual, it is far from clear that these statutes are enough like traditional torts to justify the reflexive and automatic use of tort law. Employment discrimination statutes …

Do You Believe He Can Fly? Royce White And Reasonable Accommodations Under The Americans With Disabilities Act For Nba Players With Anxiety Disorder And Fear Of Flying, Michael Mccann

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the legal ramifications of Royce White, a basketball player with general anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder, playing in the NBA. White's conditions cause him to have a fear of flying, thus making it difficult to play in the NBA. This subject is without precedent in sports law and, because of the unique aspects of an NBA playing career, lacks clear analogy to other employment circumstances. This dispute also illuminates broader legal and policy issues in the relationship between employment and mental illness.

This Article argues that White would likely fail in a lawsuit against an NBA …

Incompetent But Deportable: The Case For A Right To Mental Competence In Removal Proceedings, Fatma E. Marouf

Scholarly Works

Important strides are currently being made toward increasing procedural due process protections for noncitizens with serious mental disabilities in removal proceedings, such as providing them with competency hearings and appointed counsel. This Article goes even further, arguing that courts should recognize a substantive due process right to competence in removal proceedings, which would prevent those found mentally incompetent from being deported. Recognizing a right to competence in a quasi-criminal proceeding such as removal would not be unprecedented, as most states already recognize this right in juvenile adjudication proceedings. The Article demonstrates that the same reasons underlying the prohibition against trial …

Lost In The Shuffle: How Health And Disability Laws Hurt Disordered Gamblers, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

Gambling disorder is not a legally sympathetic health condition. Health insurance policies and plans have long excluded treatment for gambling disorder from health insurance coverage. Individuals with gambling disorder who seek disability income insurance benefits from public and private disability income insurers also tend not to be successful in their claims. In addition, federal and state antidiscrimination laws currently exclude individuals with gambling disorder from disability discrimination protections. This Article is the first law review article to challenge the legal treatment of individuals with gambling disorder by showing how health insurance and antidiscrimination laws hurt problem gamblers. Using neuroscience, economics, …

Wheelchair Ramps In Cyberspace: Bringing The Americans With Disabilities Act Into The 21st Century, Trevor Crowley

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Where Schools Close In Chicago, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

It is often assumed that schools close, disproportionately, in disadvantaged parts of Chicago. The assumption, however, has yet to be substantiated by research. As a result, this article tests the assumption in order to explain where schools close in Chicago. It does so by introducing a new Chicago Public School (CPS) closings dataset. The dataset sheds some light on the phenomenon by identifying 130 schools that closed, twenty-seven ZIP codes that experienced CPS closings and three demographic characteristics of these ZIP codes. In the process, this dataset helps to explain how CPS closings relate to race, income and location.

Data Note: State Intellectual And Developmental Disability Agencies' Service Trends, Jean Winsor

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

In FY2012, an estimated 605,680 individuals received day or employment supports from state IDD program agencies. This number grew from 457,405 in FY1999. The estimated number of individuals in integrated employment services increased from 108,680 in FY1999 to 111,670 in FY2012. State investment continues to emphasize facility-based and non-work services, rather than integrated employment services.

Partnerships In Employment Brief: Engaging Families Of Youth With Intellectual Disabilities In Systems Change Efforts, Sean Roy

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

This brief will highlight the reasons why parents and families are essential partners in any systems change effort. It will describe the importance of the family’s perspective, and how their experiences should be used to shape policy recommendations. It will offer strategies on how to engage parents and families in systems change efforts, and how to promote family involvement to state-level partners.

Data Note: Are Young Adults With Intellectual Disabilities Getting Work Experiences From Participating In The Vocational Rehabilitation Program?, Alberto Migliore, Jean Winsor

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

To learn about whether young adults with intellectual disabilities in the vocational rehabilitation (VR) program are getting work experience, we examined the age at application of people with intellectual disabilities who exited the VR program in 2012.

Data Note: Vocational Rehabilitation Closure Trends For Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities: A Snapshot Of Five U.S. Territories, Jean Winsor, Daria Domin

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Beginning in FY2013, the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities requested that each Project of National Significance include the five primary territories of the United States in data collection and analysis efforts. The five territories included in this analysis are American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands of the United States.

Partnerships In Employment: Summary Of: Section 1915(C) Home And Community Based Services Waivers And Section 1915(I) State Plan Home And Community Based Services, Cady Landa, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

This is a resource document prepared for a Community of Practice (COP) on using Medicaid funds as a resource to support individual integrated employment. The COP is hosted by the Partnerships in Employment Training and Technical Assistance Center for Partnerships in Employment grantees. The goal of the COP will be to provide opportunities to learn about the ways in which 1915(c) Home and Community Based Waivers and 1915(i) State Plan Home and Community Based Services have been used to support integrated employment in federal statue and in states with PIE grants.

Statedata: The National Report On Employment Services And Outcomes, 2014, John Butterworth, Jean Winsor, Frank A. Smith, Alberto Migliore, Daria Domin, Jaimie Ciulla Timmons, Allison Cohen Hall, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

This report provides statistics over 25 years from several national datasets that address the status of employment and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The authors use abbreviations for both intellectual disability (ID) and intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in this report. We do this because data sources vary in the specific target groups that can be described.

We provide a comprehensive overview that describes national trends in employment for people with IDD, and the appendices provide individual state profiles with data from several sources. These include the ICI’s IDD Agency National Survey of Day and Employment …

Leroy Pitzer: Citizen, Voter, Lunatic?, Rabia Belt

Studio for Law and Culture

In a 1905 Ohio case, In re South Charleston Election Contest, Leroy Pitzer was accused of being a “lunatic” or an “idiot” and thus unable to vote in a tight and contest election that ripped the town of South Charleston in half. After intense deliberations – and considering 29 different definitions of lunacy and idiocy – the court decided that something was wrong with Leroy Pitzer, but they could not figure out exactly what. They also could not determine who Pitzer voted for. Unfortunately, without his vote, the election result was a tie and the entire election was rerun.

The …

An Eye Toward Effective Enforcement: A Technical-Comparative Approach To The Drafting Negotiations, Tara J. Melish

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 5 in Human Rights and Disability Advocacy, Maya Sabatello & Marianne Schulze, eds.

The unprecedented level of civil society participation that took place in the drafting of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) constitutes a major key to its success -- laying a solid foundation for the much longer and harder process of implementation ahead. This piece addresses how one civil society organization -- Disability Rights International (DRI) -- approached the negotiation process. Part I explains the strategic approach DRI adopted, highlighting its methodology, the guiding principles it embraced, and the resulting …

Leave As An Accommodation: When Is Enough, Enough?, Stacy A. Hickox, Joseph M. Guzman

Cleveland State Law Review

The right to reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act includes leave that will enable an employee with a disability to return to work rather than being discharged. This right may seem unreasonable for an employer needing employees to be at work to be productive, raising the question of when leave as an accommodation becomes unreasonable or imposes an undue hardship on an employer. In the absence of specific guidance from the Supreme Court, the circuit courts apply a variety of approaches, ranging from individualized analysis to determinations that any leave exceeding some number of weeks is unreasonable. In …

Advocates, Federal Agencies, And The Education Of Children With Disabilities, Eloise Pasachoff

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The aim of this essay, prepared for a symposium on dispute resolution in special education held at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in February 2014, is to highlight ways that advocates for children with disabilities can use federal agencies to improve the implementation and enforcement of federal laws protecting children with disabilities in schools—that is, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act as it relates to schools.

One can spend a lot of time engaging with the contemporary public conversation about the law surrounding …

Designing A Flexible World For The Many: "Essential Functions" And Title I Of The Americans With Disabilities Act, Michael J. Powers

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note explores how courts interpret the meaning of “essential functions” under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act. To be protected under the ADA, a plaintiff must be able to perform the “essential functions” of her job with or without a reasonable accommodation. In general, courts follow one of two approaches when interpreting this phrase. The first approach narrowly focuses on the employer’s judgment regarding which functions are essential. The second approach considers the employer’s judgment, but looks beyond to consider the broader employment relationship. This Note argues that these different approaches have led to varying levels of …