“America has reached a point where almost half its population is described as being in some way mentally ill, and nearly a quarter of its citizens – 67.5 million – have taken antidepressants.” The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (latest edition, DSM-IV) is “invoked chapter and verse in schools, prisons, courts, and by mental-health professionals around the world.” But how objective and reliable is its classification of disorders? (Christopher Lane, New York Sun, Mar. 26). More thoughts: Jane Genova.
Posts Tagged ‘disabled rights’
An ADA right to smoke-free eateries?
Thus argues a lawsuit filed by James Bogden against four restaurants in Alexandria, Va., which “seeks to require the restaurants to become smoke-free, arguing that they must accommodate Bogden’s disability, coronary artery disease, and eliminate secondhand smoke so he can eat at them. Each of the restaurants allows smoking in designated areas.” (Jerry Markon, “Man With Heart Condition Wants Smoke-Free Eateries”, Washington Post, Jan. 31).
Freakonomics on unintended consequences
Dubner and Levitt’s three examples of unintended consequences (Jan. 20) include two that will be familiar to longtime readers of this site: the way the Americans with Disabilities Act can harm disabled persons by convincing service providers and employers that it could prove legally onerous to take them on as customers or employees; and the way environmental law can backfire to encourage landowners to take a chainsaw to habitats suitable for endangered species. More: Bruce MacEwen.
Welcome New Zealand radio listeners
I was on Marcus Lush’s Radio Live talk show out of Auckland this morning, discussing American employment law. My book The Excuse Factory: How Employment Law Is Paralyzing the American Workplace is available on Amazon.
Web accessibility: Sylvan’s surrender
The Department of Justice regards online tutoring services as “public accommodations” subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act, and in September entered into a consent decree with Sylvan Learning Centers, which agreed to provide aids such as written materials and “videotext displays” (as well as free sign-language interpreters) for the assistance of deaf persons who might wish to use its services. As TechLaw Journal notes (Sept. 26-30), and as we have often noted before in our ongoing coverage, there is reason to expect the legal pressure for web accessibility to extend to online businesses more generally.
U.K.: Farm stiles and gates yield to wheelchair access
In the English countryside stiles and so-called kissing gates “have been a familiar feature of the landscape for centuries, but local authorities now believe that installing them along footpaths and rights of way is a breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.” (“Farms kiss goodbye to stiles and gates to allow wheelchair access”, Times Online, Nov. 30). According to Wikipedia, some kissing gates are designed on a large enough scale that wheelchairs can pass through.
Disabled accommodation of an alarming sort, cont’d
When you dial 911 from some new Verizon Wireless phones, it seems the phone itself emits an audible alarm. The telecom provider says it installed the feature to comply with federal law requiring that phone services be made “accessible and usable by individuals with disabilities”. Unfortunately, it has a disconcerting effect on users like a nondisabled Austin, Texas woman who dialed 911 because she feared she was about to have a close encounter with vandals on a vacant property she owned. The FCC says it does not require specific ways of meeting the accessibility mandate and that other methods besides audible tones might be found. (Clara Tuma, “Verizon customer calls phone alarm ‘dangerous'”, KVUE, Nov. 9). Reader L.S. writes that the story reminds him of the “Neckbelts” article in The Onion. We noted some years ago that strobe-light-equipped fire alarms, being pressed on government standards-writers as a way to alert deaf persons to emergencies, might prove dangerous to persons with photosensitive epilepsy, many of whom risk being sent into seizures by brightly flashing lights.
“Disney sued for Segway ban”
“Three disabled people have sued Walt Disney World for not allowing them to use their Segways to move around its theme parks. … Disney says it fears Segways could endanger other guests because they can go faster than 12 mph.” (AP/Centre Daily Times (Pa.), Nov. 11). More: Washington Post, MagicalMountain.net. in Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas (“Note to Disney: Don’t give up on Segway suit”, Nov. 13) writes:
If a disabled person can get around just as well in a wheelchair as on a Segway, does Disney have the right to pick the wheelchair in the interest of guest safety?
One of the people suing Disney says she did not want her children seeing her rely on a wheelchair.
But to go that route means we expand the ADA to accommodate not only people’s disabilities but also their feelings about their disabilities.
I feel for that woman, but this is a huge legal leap.
ADA bans lottery-ticket sales in smoking venues?
Make way for another creative application of the Americans with Disabilities Act: the office of Texas attorney general Greg Abbott says it could violate the ADA for the Texas Lottery Commission to permit sale of its lottery tickets in stores that allow smoking. “Lewisville resident Billy Williams complained to the commission in 2006 that he had an asthma attack after buying a ticket at a smoky store.” Abbott’s office found that the ADA requires that disabled residents be provided with “‘meaningful access’ to state services”, in this case consisting of lottery tickets, and that smoking-allowed policies at participating retailers could impair such access. (“Smoking questioned for stores that sell lottery tickets”, AP/Houston Chronicle, Nov. 9).
The right to be injured, redux?
Power tools manufacturer Black & Decker Corp. rejected Victor Breehne for a ”highly wrist-sensitive job” at a Tennessee plant after medical tests suggested that Breehne was vulnerable to carpal-tunnel syndrome. Now he’s suing, charging that the rejection violates the Americans with Disabilities Act:
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has challenged the use of such tests, which aren’t uncommon in manufacturing settings, on ADA grounds. But it lost a federal lawsuit in 2001 against Rockwell Automation Inc. after that company denied jobs to 72 applicants at an Illinois plant.
(Allison Connolly, “B&D sued after it rescinds job offer”, Baltimore Sun, Oct. 16; “Man sues after job offer rescinded over carpal tunnel test”, Reliable Plant, Oct. 17). For the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Echabazal v. Chevron, in which the Court (over vociferous protests from some disabled-rights advocates) unanimously ruled that an employer was not obliged to hire a disabled applicant who was at greater risk of injury and death than other workers, see Mar. 1-3, 2002 and links from there.