Disability Law Commons^™

Common-Law Interpretation Of Appropriate Education: The Road Not Taken In Rowley, Mark Weber

College of Law Faculty

Thirty years old in 2012, Board of Education v. Rowley is the case that established a some-benefit or floor-of-opportunity standard for the services public school districts must provide to children who have disabilities. But the some-benefit approach is by no means the only one the Court could have adopted. It could have endorsed the view of the lower courts that each child with a disability must be given the opportunity to achieve his or her potential commensurate with the opportunity offered other children. Or it could have adopted a standard based on achievement of the child’s full potential or the …

Confine Is Fine: Have The Non-Dangerous Mentally Ill Lost Their Right To Liberty? An Empirical Study To Unravel The Psychiatrist’S Crystal Ball, Donald H. Stone

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article will examine the reverse trend in civil commitment laws in the wake of recent tragedies and discuss the effect of broader civil commitment standards on the care and treatment of the mentally ill. The 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, the 2011 shooting of Congresswoman Giffords, and the 2012 Aurora movie theatre shooting have spurred fierce debates about the dangerousness of mentally ill and serve as cautionary tale about what happens when warning signs go unnoticed and opportunities for early intervention missed. This piece will explore the misconception about the role medication and inpatient civil commitments should play in prevention …

Implementing Legal Capacity Under Article 12 Of The Un Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities: The Difficult Road From Guardianship To Supported Decision-Making, Robert Dinerstein

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Preventing Sex-Offender Recidivism Through Therapeutic Jurisprudence Approaches And Specialized Community Integration, Heather Cucolo, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

The public’s panic about the fear of recidivism if adjudicated sex offenders are ever to be released to the community has not subsided, despite the growing amount of information and statistically-reliable data signifying a generally low risk of re-offense. The established case law upholding sex offender civil commitment and containment statutes has rejected challenges of unconstitutionality, and continues to be dominated by punitive undertones. We have come to learn that the tools used to assess offenders for risk and civil commitment are often inaccurate and that meaningful treatment for this population is often unavailable and ineffective. Yet, society continues to …

Disabling Attitudes: U.S. Disability Law And The Ada Amendments Act, Elizabeth F. Emens

Faculty Scholarship

This is a crucial juncture for U.S. disability law. In 2008, Congress passed the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA), which aims to reverse the courts’ narrowing interpretations of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. This legislative intervention provides an important lens through which to consider attitudes toward disability, both because the success of the ADAAA will depend on judicial attitudes, and because the changes rendered by the ADAAA shed light on pervasive societal attitudes. This Essay makes three main points. First, the ADAAA intervenes in the developing doctrine on disability discrimination in important ways; in so doing, however, the ADAAA …

Framing Disability, Elizabeth F. Emens

Faculty Scholarship

Mainstream attitudes toward disability lag behind U.S. law. This tension between attitudes and law reflects a wider gap between the ideas about disability pervasive in mainstream society — what this Article calls the "outside" view — and the ideas about disability common within the disability community — what this Article calls the "inside" view. The outside perspective tends to misunderstand and mischaracterize aspects of the experience, theory, and law of disability.

The law can help to close this gap in attitudes by changing the conditions in which attitudes are formed or reinforced. Thus, this Article proposes using framing rules to …

Blindsight: How We See Disabilities In Tort Litigation, Anne Bloom, Paul Steven Miller

Washington Law Review

Tort litigation operates with a distorted perspective of disability. It suffers from blindsight; it does not see people with disabilities the way they see themselves. Disability advocates emphasize that most people with disabilities lead happy lives. Deeply rooted biases, however, make it difficult for this perspective to be recognized. Tort litigation’s heavy emphasis on medical testimony and its repeated portrayal of plaintiffs as “less than whole” over-emphasize the physical aspects of disability and unfairly depict people with disabilities as tragic. When legal actors embrace these views, they reinforce harmful stereotypes outside the courthouse doors. Newly disabled plaintiffs are also likely …

Data Note: Ssi Recipients Who Work, Daria Domin, Frank A. Smith

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a means-tested income-support program administered by the Social Security Administration. Eligibility is contingent upon proving that one has a limited ability to work due to disability. However, the program offers several work incentives aimed at encouraging SSI recipients to enter the workforce while maintaining their benefits. Despite the promotion of employment through Work Incentives Planning and Assistance (WIPA) and other programs, a very small percentage of SSI recipients actually work. This Data Note examines the number of SSI recipients working by state in 2010.

State Mandated Disability Insurance As Salve To The Consumer Bankruptcy Imbroglio, Alena Allen

BYU Law Review

From Main Street to Wall Street, Americans are hurting. In 2009, over 1.4 million families filed for bankruptcy. Researchers examining the causes of bankruptcy discovered that as many as sixty-two percent of all bankruptcies were precipitated by a medical crisis. Because many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and lack disability insurance, when a medical crisis strikes, bank accounts are quickly depleted by the amalgam of high medical bills and lost wages. Disability insurance provides needed wage replacement when a worker is unable to work due to an illness or injury. This Article presents the case for statemandated disability insurance …

Data Note: Decline In The Provision Of Facility-Based Work Services For People With Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities, Jean E. Winsor, Alberto Migliore

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Facility-based work services are vocational services provided in settings where the majority of people have a disability and receive continuous job-related supports and supervision. Facility-based work services are also referred to as sheltered work, work activity services, or extended employment programs.

Brief Of Amici Curiae In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellant, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission V. The Picture People, Inc., No. 11-1306, Marc Charmatz, Debra Patkin

Court Briefs

The National Association for the Deaf and the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law Civil Rights of Persons with Disabilities Clinic submitted an amici curiae Brief in EEOC v. Picture People, 684 F.3d 981 (10th Cir. 2012). At issue in Picture People was whether deaf or hard of hearing individuals may be discharged from an employment position in a photography studio because the employer believes the employee may have a limited ability to communicate verbally when the employer has accommodated the employee’s hearing disability. The brief supports the retaliation argument proffered by the EEOC in their …

Diagnosing Liability : The Legal History Of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Deirdre M. Smith

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the origins of the unique relationship between the psychiatric diagnosis Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the law and considers the implications of that relationship for contemporary uses of the diagnosis in legal settings. PTSD stands apart from all other diagnoses in psychiatry 's standard classification system, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM} , and is the focus of significant controversy within psychiatry, because its diagnostic criteria require a determination of causation. By diagnosing a person with PTSD, a clinician necessarily assigns responsibility to a specific event or agent for causing the person 's symptoms, …

Creating New Law Or Restoring The Old - Retroactivity And The Americans With Disabilities Amendments Act Of 2008: A Comment On Eeoc V Autozone, Frederick J. Melkey

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Assessing Post-Ada Employment: Some Econometric Evidence And Policy Considerations, John J. Donohue Iii, Michael Ashley Stein, Christopher L. Griffin Jr., Sascha Becker

Faculty Publications

This study looks at whether the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) helped or hurt job opportunities for people with disabilities. The researchers used long-term survey data following the same individuals from 1981 to 1996 to see changes in work hours, yearly pay, and hourly wages. For the larger group studied, employment for people with disabilities dropped after the ADA took effect, but their pay compared to other workers stayed about the same. For a smaller group of workers tracked every year, job levels did not show the same drop, though wages for people with disabilities were already falling …

Augmenting Advocacy: Giving Voice To The Medical-Legal Partnership Model In Medicaid Proceedings And Beyond, Marybeth Musumeci

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The denial of Medicaid coverage for augmentative communication devices, despite an existing legal framework that mandates the opposite result, raises fundamental questions about what independence means for people with disabilities. This situation, compounded by the barriers in the Medicaid administrative appeal process encountered by such beneficiaries, invites new approaches to the delivery of civil legal services, such as medical-legal partnerships (MLPs). MLPs are formalized arrangements that bring lawyers into a healthcare setting to provide specialist consultations when patients experience legal problems that affect health. While there is an emerging scholarship on MLPs, this Article offers the first in-depth analysis of …

Disability Law - Americans With Disabilities Act Of 1990 - Title Ii And Title Iii And The Expansion Of Captioning For The Deaf: From Televisions And Movie Theaters To Stadiums And Arenas, Daniel Haney

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Data Note: State Intellectual And Developmental Disability Agencies' Funding For Employment Services, Jean E. Winsor, Frank A. Smith

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Employment has been identified as a priority outcome in federal policy and state employment-first initiatives, and by individuals with IDD. Members of Self Advocates Becoming Empowered have issued a call to increase access to integrated employment and eliminate facility-based work (2009). In many states, the IDD agency and/or statewide advocacy coalitions have developed and implemented employment-first initiatives (State Employment Leadership Network, 2011). However, there is limited data available on the cost of integrated employment services compared to facility-based work services to guide the implementation of these initiatives.

Enabling Refugee And Idp Law And Policy: Implications Of The U.N. Disability Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities, Michael Ashley Stein, Janet E. Lord

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Data Note: Job Seekers With Disabilities At One-Stop Career Centers: An Examination Of Registration For Wagner-Peyser Funded Employment Services, 2002 To 2009, David Hoff, Frank A. Smith

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

The Wagner-Peyser Act of 1933 established a nationwide system of public employment services, known as the Employment Service. Via the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, the Employment Service was made part of the One-Stop Career Center service-delivery system. Wagner-Peyser is a primary source of funding for these centers, which make employment services available to all people, including those with disabilities. There are currently 1,800+ comprehensive One-Stop Career Centers throughout the United States, as well as satellite and affiliate centers.

The Evolution Of Disability Management In North American Workers' Compensation Programs, H. Allan Hunt

Reports

No abstract provided.