# Will Trump weaken the Americans With Disabilities Act?



## mark handler (Dec 9, 2016)

Will Trump weaken the Americans With Disabilities Act?
by Michelle K. Wolf
Dec. 7, 2016
http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/will_trump_weaken_the_americans_with_disabilities_act

On a sunny July afternoon in 1990, on the West Lawn of the White House, Republican President George H.W. Bush signed into law the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), the nation’s first comprehensive civil rights law addressing the needs of people with disabilities, prohibiting discrimination in employment, public services, public accommodations and telecommunications.
“As I look around at all these joyous faces, I remember clearly how many years of dedicated commitment have gone into making this historic new civil rights act a reality,” he said during the signing ceremony. “It’s been the work of a true coalition, a strong and inspiring coalition of people who have shared both a dream and a passionate determination to make that dream come true. It’s been a coalition in the finest spirit — a joining of Democrats and Republicans, of the legislative and the executive branches, of federal and state agencies, of public officials and private citizens, of people with disabilities and without.”
And now, some 26 years later under a new Republican administration, disability activists are very fearful that this important and life-changing law will be weakened, not enforced as intended or, even worse, gutted. Look at President-elect Donald Trump’s history with the ADA, which includes numerous lawsuits filed over the lack of accessibility at many of the properties that bear his name. This includes, most recently, a complaint filed in September, alleging that his new Washington, D.C., hotel has only two of 12 room types accessible to guests with disabilities. The complaint, filed by a member of Advocates for Disabled Americans who wishes to remain anonymous, says the cheapest room option in the hotel is not disabled-accessible, and the bathrooms in the hotel’s common areas violate other ADA requirements.

*Over the past 19 years, Trump’s properties have been sued at last eight times for violating the ADA.* A 2003 lawsuit by James Conlon alleged that a Trump-owned casino in Atlantic City used buses that were virtually impossible to board from a wheelchair. He alleged that he was told on two occasions that there were no “buses available for use by persons who use wheelchairs who choose to leave from the Long Beach, N.Y., departure site.” *The case was later settled.*
The biggest lawsuit in financial terms, in 2015, concerned Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. It alleged multiple ADA violations, including no signs showing where the disabled parking was in the self-park garage, inaccessible areas of the gaming floor, and counter surfaces at the buffet that were too high for people in wheelchairs.* Trump settled the suit.*
Moreover, the ADA is enforced by the Department of Justice civil rights division, which is under the purview of the U.S. attorney general. Because Trump’s nominee for that position is Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, disability advocates are deeply worried that the Justice Department is likely to ignore ADA complaints.
A coalition of more than 200 national organizations committed to protecting civil rights and human rights sent a letter last week to Senate leaders of both parties, expressing “strong opposition” to Sessions’ confirmation. They cited, among other complaints, his opposition to efforts in Alabama “to provide community-based services to individuals with disabilities who were needlessly institutionalized.”
The Justice Department has the option of investigating complaints, then deciding if corrective steps need to be taken, such as mediation or litigation. If the department does nothing, the complaints will go nowhere.
In light of Trump’s history with ADA compliance and Sessions’ becoming the chief ADA enforcer, various disability organizations are wondering what will happen.
In the deaf community, for example, the fear is that, “An ADA weakened by lack of oversight and money could well mean continued police brutality against people with disabilities,” wrote author Sara Novic, who is deaf, last month on vice.com. “In the case of deaf people specifically, law enforcement already has a troubling record of arresting and detaining people without providing interpreters, or even a pen and paper, to explain the reason for arrest or Mirandize them.”
In the autism community, there are concerns that Sessions will halt the progress of community integration and inclusion for children and adults with disabilities. As the Autism Self Advocacy Network said in response to Sessions’ nomination: “For the past several years, the Department of Justice has actively enforced the Americans With Disability Act and the Olmstead decision (which advocates for integrated living), resulting in increased community inclusion for disabled people across the country. But Sessions has suggested increasing the segregation of disabled students in public schools, calling the inclusion of students with significant disabilities ‘the single most irritating problem for teachers throughout America today.’ ”
Watering down ADA compliance or creating more loopholes for businesses to evade ADA-related expenses runs counter to prevailing public support for a fully accessible America. Since the ADA became law, there has been a growing recognition that everyone is vulnerable to becoming disabled from a car accident or illness, especially the elderly. Also, ramps, elevators and curb cuts help everyone, not just people with a physical disability. As the article “The Curb-Cut Effect” in the Winter 2017 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, says, after the passage of the ADA, “a magnificent and unexpected thing happened. When the wall of exclusion came down, everyone benefited — not only people in wheelchairs. Parents pushing strollers headed straight for curb cuts. So did workers pushing heavy carts, business travelers wheeling luggage, even runners and skateboarders.”
So not enforcing the ADA won’t just harm the 20 percent of Americans with disabilities; it would harm all of us, no matter our presidential choice. That’s why the same coalition of Democrats and Republicans, and people with and without disabilities who worked to get the ADA signed into law 26 years ago, will need to come together again to make sure that this important law is upheld and fully enforced.


----------



## mtlogcabin (Dec 9, 2016)

calling the inclusion of students with significant disabilities ‘the single most irritating problem for teachers throughout America today.’ ”

Government baby sitting is all some of this is.


----------



## conarb (Dec 9, 2016)

He was elected to end (among other things)  political correctness and drastically reduce regulations, the American people are sick of special treatment to certain individuals, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was not a Constitutional Amendment but merely a law, that law can be revised at any time by the Congress.  The most objectionable parts are not the laws themselves but the regulations written by politicized Justice Departments, Congress may or may not revise or repeal the law, the Justice Department will most surely revise the unconstitutional regulations, so everything you are inspecting will certainly be revised withing the next few years.  As to state regulations they can stay the same or might be revised to bring them into compliance with federal law.  Regulations should revert to being interpretations of law, and cease to be ever more new law, Justice Thomas has written several times about the need to stop writing law by regulation.


----------



## cda (Dec 9, 2016)

Or will it be enforced correctly

And not be used to sue people


----------



## ICE (Dec 9, 2016)

There is no better example of a government run amuck than ADA.


----------



## Pcinspector1 (Dec 9, 2016)

Maybe the EPA? 

Obamma care?


----------



## mark handler (Dec 9, 2016)

ICE said:


> There is no better example of a government run amuck than ADA.


Still Will not stop the CA Access requirements...other states have accessibility requirements as well. Sueing under the Unruh act has nothing to do with ADA.


----------



## conarb (Dec 9, 2016)

mark handler said:


> Still Will not stop the CA Access requirements...other states have accessibility requirements as well. Sueing under the Unruh act has nothing to do with ADA.


While this is true all Trump has to do is withdraw federal funding to California, we live on federal funding in this state, the government giveth and the government taketh away. Look what Obama did to the Republican voting coal states, he showed no mercy whatsoever, Trump should do the same to the radical left wing states, payback is fair play.


----------



## CityKin (Dec 9, 2016)

^California already pays more to the Feds than other states and gets least in return

_ ... a disproportionate amount of per capita federal spending and benefits now flow down to the low-density states. ...for every dollar New Jersey pays in federal taxes, it receives 61 cents in benefits and other federal spending. For the same dollar of taxes Wyoming spends, it gets $1.11 back._


----------



## ADAguy (Dec 12, 2016)

conarb said:


> He was elected to end (among other things)  political correctness and drastically reduce regulations, the American people are sick of special treatment to certain individuals, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was not a Constitutional Amendment but merely a law, that law can be revised at any time by the Congress.  The most objectionable parts are not the laws themselves but the regulations written by politicized Justice Departments, Congress may or may not revise or repeal the law, the Justice Department will most surely revise the unconstitutional regulations, so everything you are inspecting will certainly be revised within the next few years.  As to state regulations they can stay the same or might be revised to bring them into compliance with federal law.  Regulations should revert to being interpretations of law, and cease to be ever more new law, Justice Thomas has written several times about the need to stop writing law by regulation.



I believe that regulations are written to implement (instruct the application) the intent of laws but not to create law where none was intended by the law to exist. Therein lies the basic issue, often written in haste (though well intentioned) the language of most laws is written in general terms (often without regard or understanding as to possible ripple effects) lacking the specifity by which to draft implementing regulations.


----------



## conarb (Dec 12, 2016)

ADAguy said:


> I believe that regulations are written to implement (instruct the application) the intent of laws but not to create law where none was intended by the law to exist. Therein lies the basic issue, often written in haste (though well intentioned) the language of most laws is written in general terms (often without regard or understanding as to possible ripple effects) lacking the specifity by which to draft implementing regulations.


ADAguy:

The new Justice Department should review the existing regulations to find out if they are interpretations of the law as written by Congress, or are beyond interpretation and into laws themselves, this should be done without pressure from Disability activist groups.  After the law is reinterpreted new regulations can be written in conformance with the law.  If the law is unclear or unduly burdensome then the new AG should seek a congressman to propose new law to replace the ambiguities and/or undue burdens placed upon government or private parties, all of this should be done without the input of lobbyists or activist groups, Trump said he was going to drain the swamp of the lobbyists, but I doubt that will happened, buying laws is ingrained in our political system.


----------



## Paul Sweet (Dec 13, 2016)

ADA accessibility guidelines were based on ANSI A117.1 consensus standards.  What needs to be changed is enforcement by lawsuit.


----------



## conarb (Dec 13, 2016)

Paul Sweet said:


> ADA accessibility guidelines were based on ANSI A117.1 consensus standards.  What needs to be changed is enforcement by lawsuit.


Who influenced ANSI to write the standard, did ANSI dictate the federal law or did the federal law dictate ANSI? 

Disability mandates should become just code matters like everything else, wider doors, wider parking spaces,  etc., buildings built to code should be compliant with the code in effect when they were built, any disability conditions should apply to new construction only, this should bring them into compliance with the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.


----------



## tmurray (Dec 13, 2016)

conarb said:


> Disability mandates should become just code matters like everything else, wider doors, wider parking spaces,  etc., buildings built to code should be compliant with the code in effect when they were built, any disability conditions should apply to new construction only



That's the way "socialist" Canada does it...


----------



## ICE (Dec 13, 2016)

lawsuits is the least of it.  The damage done to society is immeasurable. Ninety percent of the population can't understand ninety percent of the requirements.

When a drinking fountain has more regulation that a stairway, it's time to toss in the towel.

60 minutes had a segment on the lawsuits during which chairlifts at swimming pools was mentioned.  The hotel owner who paid crooks thousands of dollars because he didn't have a lift spent thousands more installing a lift....that has never been used.

Pay attention to handicapped parking spaces.  Right up front and mostly empty.  Huge too.  So a van can have room to deploy a chair that is  ....wait for it.... on wheels.  That space could be anywhere.  But there is also the person with COPD that needs the spot next to the front door.  What about the guy with bad knees?  My neighbor that has bunions?  Sally, the 400lb clerk at the car-wash?  When you get to lazy people I reckon that's enough.

The absolute truth is that the tail is wagging the dog.  The entire concept lacks merit in that most of what has been foisted upon property owners does not get used.  It's window dressing.  All sizzle and no steak.  It should have stopped with curb cuts and oversized bathroom stalls.

Understanding that .005% of Americans are in a wheelchair makes one wonder how we could be so stupid.


----------



## ADAguy (Dec 13, 2016)

ICE, I take it you don't drive? If you do, do you have a placard?
Where do you get your statistics from?
More minorities are working and (paying taxes) than ever before due to civil rights laws, including those with disabilities.


----------



## steveray (Dec 13, 2016)

tmurray said:


> That's the way "socialist" Canada does it...



Maybe we could talk Conarb into going socialist?...


----------



## conarb (Dec 13, 2016)

Tiger said:
			
		

> The absolute truth is that the tail is wagging the dog. The entire concept lacks merit in that most of what has been foisted upon property owners does not get used. It's window dressing. All sizzle and no steak. It should have stopped with curb cuts and oversized bathroom stalls.



At my age I have friends in wheelchairs, that's exactly what they say, the curb cuts are good, but the rest of it isn't worth the hatred it generates.



> Understanding that .005% of Americans are in a wheelchair makes one wonder how we could be so stupid.



This is true of all civil rights law, activists take up the causes and it becomes a job for them, all it does is tell people that they are somehow inferior and that they are entitled to special consideration, blacks were doing much better before civil rights law, in fact I saw the blacks as taking over the construction trades, many were in it and doing well, after the civil rights law and other legislation my mail box was full of garnishment notices from the state, as soon as they received their first check with half the money garnished they disappeared, I asked what was going on and was told that men were leaving their families so their wives could collect Aid for Dependent Children while they could continue to work, often times sneaking back into their homes at night trying not to be caught by "The Welfare".  The female situation is terrible, feminist women want to work, so men aren't supporting families anymore, I've read that the reason the Japanese birth level has plummeted well below replacement level is that Japanese men aren't getting married since Japanese women are adopting western style feminist values.


----------



## Paul Sweet (Dec 15, 2016)

ASA (a forerunner to ANSI) developed the first standard in 1961.
http://archives.library.illinois.ed...rican_standard_specifications_oct_31_1961.pdf

North Carolina and some other states developed handicap standards during the 1970s and incorporated them into their codes.

ANSI A117.1 was published in 1980 and had most of the current requirements.  It was the basis of UFAS, the first federal standard which was developed in 1984 by DOD, HUD, GSA, & USPS


----------



## ADAguy (Dec 15, 2016)

Actually Massachussets 67' predates them all.


----------

