10/15/2001 12:00:00 AM
More than a decade after the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was established, courts at nearly all levels continue to be filled with cases based on ADA claims. The biggest issue involves who is covered and who is not, according to Barry Taylor, legal advocacy director at Equip for Equality, an Illinois advocacy organization for people with disabilities and their families.
“It’s interesting and frustrating,” Mr. Taylor said of the ADA. “You have to prove you have a disability to be covered by the law. Most cases that people with disabilities have lost are from not being able to prove they have an ADA-covered disability. Courts have taken a narrow view of who is covered.”
Mr. Taylor spoke at a recent seminar on the ADA and job accommodations that was sponsored by the AbilityLinks Consortium’s Education Committee. The seminar, held at Donka, Inc., a computer training lab and job placement resource in DuPage County, Illinois, brought together employers, employees, service agency administrators and others interested in learning more about the ADA.
Mr. Taylor explained that there are three broad categories into which people must fit in order to be covered by the ADA. They are: a person with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; a person with a record of such a physical or mental impairment; and a person who is regarded as having such an impairment, whether he or she actually does or not.
Whether someone has a physical disability is usually not disputed, but whether that disability substantially limits a major life activity is where disputes arise, Mr. Taylor said. He provided a list of major life activities that included breathing, caring for oneself, hearing, seeing, walking, working, sitting, standing and other activities. Additionally, whether the condition “substantially” limits a person’s ability to perform one of these activities is often debated.
Broadly, such an impairment either prevents an individual from performing those essential functions or significantly restricts the manner and duration that a person can perform an activity, he explained.
He noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has held recently that an individual is not considered to have an ADA-covered disability if the person uses medication or a prosthetic device to ease the effects of the condition to the degree that it is not substantially limiting.
In these cases, an employee has to prove that even with medication, his or her disability substantially limits the ability to perform a major life activity.
Mr. Taylor added that his organization, Equip for Equality, has more resources for employees and employers seeking to navigate through the ADA as well as case summaries from recent decisions that can provide some guidance for both employees and employers.
Mr. Taylor can be reached at 312-341-0022 (800-610-2779-TTY) or barry@equipforequality.org. The organization’s Web site is http://www.equipforequality.org.
For more information about AbilityLinks, please contact Ken Skord at Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital, 630-462-4257.