Able News Column July 2024 – The ADA and DRA: Symbiotic Changemaking
Read the entire July 2024 Able News Issue
When the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law in July 1990, I was a non-disabled sporty kid, almost 10 years old. I had no idea about the seminal role this law would soon play in my life and the life of the organization I now lead: Disability Rights Advocates (DRA). When I acquired my disability a few years later in high school and my parents started having to advocate for me in education and healthcare systems, the ADA made it somewhat easier for us to navigate. And when I decided to become a lawyer and learned about disability rights law, the winding, synergistic paths of the ADA and DRA crystalized and captivated me.
The vision of the ADA, a robust federal civil rights law, is prohibition of discrimination against people with disabilities in everyday activities. It was an important expansion of prior laws like the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which protects against discrimination by entities that receive federal funding and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) which established certain educational rights. The ADA, on paper, guarantees that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else when it comes to many spheres of life–employment, healthcare, technology, entertainment, and transportation, just to name a few. But in order to make that vision a reality, the ADA has always required enforcement through the court system. DRA was created three years after the passage of the ADA to be that enforcer when it comes to systemic barriers.
DRA’s founders created this organization to tackle systemic, illegal barriers facing people with disabilities. DRA’s work began in the birthplace of the U.S. disability rights movement: Berkeley, California. Together with disability community organizations across the country, DRA identified healthcare providers, higher education institutions, municipalities, employers, (and the list goes on) that were illegally discriminating against people with disabilities. And through one precedent-setting lawsuit after another, DRA used the ADA (and other laws) to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities—requiring those discriminating entities to remove barriers and move towards inclusion.
Our ADA lawsuits have made sure that people with disabilities are not discriminated against when participating in high-stakes academic testing, that municipalities include the needs of people with disabilities in their emergency preparedness plans, and that people with disabilities have equal access to transportation and medical treatment, to name just a few important victories.
None of these victories would have been possible without the ADA, and none of these victories would have been possible without DRA. Now, more than three decades later, one might think that DRA’s work is winding down. Quite the opposite is unfortunately true. With offices now in California, New York, and Chicago, our work has never been more robust, as barriers that people with disabilities are facing are rampant across the country.
Every time society grows and changes (as we have in extreme ways as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, global warfare, climate change, and massive political upheaval to name just a few factors), society has a choice to include or exclude people with disabilities. DRA is using the ADA to represent people with disabilities who are demanding equal access to many spheres of society. For example, today we are using the ADA to seek more accessible elections in California for people with print disabilities. We are also using the ADA to make sure Tennessee provides effective communication to d/Deaf people who receive services from the State’s Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and its Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. And we’re using the ADA to fight for rights on so many other fronts. The work goes on and, thank goodness the ADA keeps on providing the foundation for cases that establish rights to all of us with disabilities across the country.