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This paper analyzes the differing definitions of service animal under federal law as interpreted by three separate agencies. The regulations and case law interpreting the issue under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Act and the Air Carrier Access Act illustrate the need for further clarification in order to ensure that individuals with disabilities are granted the full protection of the law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, disabled Americans face substantial barriers to entry into the workplace, lack material supports including health care and transportation, and may not receive reasonable accommodation that best supports their functioning. I argue that reforming disability law requires a blend of the civil rights and social welfare models as informed by a novel lens: vulnerability as universal and constant. The current antidiscrimination approach to disability law reform is limited because it views disability as a narrow identity category and fragments the human experience. Fragmentation, a new concept I develop in this paper, results when susceptibility to disability discrimination is treated as if it arises in discrete environments, such as the workplace and particular places of public accommodation. The shared vulnerabilities of disabled and nondisabled individuals suggest the need to restructure completely social institutions to respond to barriers to work and social participation. For practical reasons, I advocate a compromise focused on disabled persons with regard to accommodation for employment and some aspects of social participation: a move to an approach that treats vulnerability as extending across environments and enables a broader provision of material supports for disabled individuals. In particular, the reasonable accommodation mandate should be expanded with governmental supports to allow disabled workers accommodations both inside and outside the workplace that facilitate their employment. Additionally, a dialogue between employers and employees about accommodating disability should be federally mandated and employees entitled to reasonable accommodation that supports their preferred methods of functioning. Given the current legal structures in place, however, recognizing vulnerability to illness as universal suggests the need for universal health care, or treating access to health care as a matter of social welfare rather than disability law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do "laws on the books" get translated into organizational rights practices? Research on this question typically relies on survey responses or small-n case studies. Our paper, how organizations implement--or fail to implement--the Americans with Disabilities Act's access provisions, combines interviews with inspections of facilities. By combining interview and inspection data, the paper seeks to overcome the difficult issue of measuring what organizations actually do to advance the underlying goals of the law as opposed to what they say they do. The result, we believe, is a more nuanced, textured picture of rights practices at the local level. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1997) create a preference toward providing services to people with disabilities in community based settings. The Olmstead decision (1997) helped to enforce this preference for adults who were suffering from mental illness. It required that in states where such placements exist and in instances where professionals recommend community based services for clients, that these services be made available to such clients. This paper will examine the impact of the Olmstead decision on community based care. It will specifically examine how population characteristics, particularly age and income, affect client rights to community based placements and mental health services. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]