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The overall aim of this study was to describe experiences of discrimination due to inaccessibility among people using mobility devices. We conducted a thematic qualitative analysis of 88 complaints about wheeled mobility device use, inaccessibility, and discrimination submitted to the Swedish Equality Ombudsman (DO) during 2015 and 2016. The analysis resulted in three themes: instigating change by invoking laws and regulations and highlighting lack of compliance; demanding to be recognised, understood, and listened to; and struggling for equal access and social participation. Regulations and treaties were invoked as the basis for complaints by people using mobility devices regarding their lack of access to physical environments and impediments to their enjoyment of their full right to participate in and contribute to society. The complaints described feelings of discrimination, the disadvantages and exclusion due to physical inaccessibility, and experiences of being prevented from living one's life as others do. Complaints filed by people using mobility devices showed that they were denied access to a wide range of contexts, including offices, theatres, restaurants, schools, and public transportation, though they desired to live an active and social life outside their homes. Filing a complaint was a way to take action, highlight present inaccessibility, and express a hope for change. Difficulties experienced by people using wheeled mobility devices can reveal knowledge important for revising existing design and renovation standards for housing and public buildings. Documenting facilitators and barriers in different environments is important for giving voice to the needs of wheeled mobility device users and revealing standards that need to be strongly enforced or revised. People using wheeled mobility devices should be supported in finding solutions in inaccessible environments, both to fulfil their wishes and to enable their participation in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal law that protects individuals with disabilities from discrimination in all areas of public life. The ADA contributes to equal opportunity across policy areas, including the interconnected domains of higher education and employment. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, emerging research has begun to document the disparities in impact on people with disabilities, among other marginalized groups. However, no research to date has reviewed and synthesized literature that addresses disability discrimination related to COVID-19 that has implications for application of the ADA. OBJECTIVE: This rapid evidence review aims to increase understanding about how COVID-19 has resulted in challenges for people with disabilities in the domains of employment and higher education that may be resolved through application of the ADA. METHODS: Keyword searches were conducted in five electronic databases. Title, abstract, and full text screening was conducted followed by a thematic analysis of key ADA themes. RESULTS: Twelve final articles were included in this review, eight categorized within higher education and four within employment. In relation to the ADA and COVID-19, five studies revealed findings related to web accessibility, eight related to effective communication, and four related to reasonable accommodations. CONCLUSION: The findings provide a broad overview of the current research on how COVID-19 has affected accessibility, communications and accommodations in employment and higher education and identify gaps in the literature within these policy domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Receiving gender-affirming care in the carceral setting--or any setting--remains a controversial and litigious process. Plaintiffs have relied on the Eighth Amendment, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and disability protections, all of which have led to inconsistent or inadequate outcomes among lower courts. However, receiving appropriate care can be the difference between life and death for those in need of it. The Fourth Circuit's decision in Williams v. Kincaid provides a path forward for those seeking gender-affirming care by clarifying the provision in the Americans with Disabilities Act ('ADA') that states its inapplicability to 'gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments' and discussing whether the law protects those with gender dysphoria. Ultimately, the Fourth Circuit held that the ADA protects individuals with gender dysphoria. However, as transformative as the decision may be, it revives concerns that have always existed about whether disability law adds to the stigma associated with the LGBT+ community, pathologizes aspects of people's identities, and gives credibility to those who seek to harm those communities by framing their identity as a diagnosis. While we should celebrate the increased access and protections that the ADA provides, we should be cautious of how it may further the marginalization that transgender and nonbinary persons experience. Furthermore, we should be cautious of overreliance on medical diagnosis when healthcare inequities are prevalent among the communities who stand to benefit the most from the ADA's protection. While relying on disability law to provide for the needs of transgender and nonbinary persons is one solution, we should think about other paths for expanding access to gender-affirming care. We should start by questioning the viability of the ADA's exclusion of 'gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments,' which has its roots in historic disapproval of LGBT+ communities. Though litigation is likely to continue on this issue in the years ahead, the hope is that the courts that have to decide whether or not to protect access to lifesaving care will provide a meaningful path forward to those whose lives depend on the recognition and affirmation of their identities and humanity., INTRODUCTION One of the most mainstream media portrayals of a transgender ('trans') person is that of Laverne Cox's character, Sophia Burset, in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. [...]

This article provides an executive summary of the American Psychological Association's (APA's) revised Guidelines for Assessment and Intervention With Persons With Disabilities. The revision was requested by the Committee on Disability Issues in Psychology and was approved by the APA Council of Representatives in February 2022. The task force updated and expanded the guidelines' empirical bases; squarely situated the guidelines in a changing sociocultural landscape (reflected in discussions of disability models, biases and barriers, language use, intersectionality, and respectful and fair assessment and intervention); and added many concrete suggestions for conceptualizing disability and working with disabled clients and their support systems. In this executive summary, we include key points from each of the 23 guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jurisprudential regimes theory (JRT) has argued that scholars could detect the effects of legal doctrine on Supreme Court decision-making by analyzing major changes in legal doctrine. Critics of JRT have argued that the evidence constitutes a simple statistical artifact and that appropriate analyses find no such results. I investigate whether changes in the legal regime affect judicial decision-making by changing the population of cases available for the courts to rule on. I find evidence that changes in the legal regime have contingent effects on decision-making. A decision that changed potential litigants' eligibility for bringing claims had negative effects on dispute generation and settlement payouts. A decision that made proof of claims easier for plaintiffs to establish increased litigant selection but decreased payouts, suggesting that plaintiffs may have reacted overconfidently. Finally, another decision that was believed to make plaintiffs' proof easier to show, but was widely disregarded, increased payouts in all cases. That decision had an initial positive effect on settlements that later shifted, suggesting that litigants saw the way lower courts were treating the decision and shifted away from their pro-plaintiff positioning. Taken together, these results offer evidence that merely asking if law constrains judicial decision-making is an incomplete inquiry. Litigants change their behavior in response to changes in the law, which affects the sample of cases that judges get to decide., INTRODUCTION 397 I. THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE 403 A. The Doctrine: Changing Employment Law in the 1990s AND 2000s 403 1. Quantitative Analysis of Case Outcomes in Employment Law 404 [...]

Employees in the United States are protected from unlawful harassment that rises to the level of a 'hostile work environment.' Federal circuits recognize that employers could be liable under Title VII when their employees experience hostile work environments because of harassment from nonemployees. However, outside of Title VII, not all federal circuits have recognized that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) protect employees from hostile work environments. As a result, employees are vulnerable with respect to age and disability-based harassment. This Comment argues that all federal circuits should allow hostile work environment claims under the ADA and ADEA. The reasons to recognize hostile work claims under the ADA and ADEA are simple but powerful: to uphold uniformity in federal law, protect American workers equally from harassment based on a protected characteristic, and recognize the influence of Title VII. Additionally, this Comment argues that liability should extend under the ADA and ADEA when employees experience hostile work environments due to nonemployee harassment. Because Title VII, the ADA, and the ADEA each intend to prohibit unlawful discrimination in employment, the ADA and ADEA should be treated the same as Title VII in this context., INTRODUCTION A customer walks into the same bank every day and harasses an employee because of their age or disability. This repeated harassment creates a hostile work environment that interferes [...]

Tens of thousands of people incarcerated in jails and prisons throughout the United States have one or more communication disabilities, a term that describes persons who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, low vision, deafblind, speech disabled, or otherwise disabled in ways that affect communication. Incarceration is not easy for anyone, but the isolation and inflexibility of incarceration can be especially challenging, dangerous, and further disabling for persons with disabilities. Correctional entities must confront these challenges; the number of incarcerated persons with communication disabilities--already overrepresented in jails and prisons--continues to grow as a proportion. Federal antidiscrimination law obligates jails and prisons to avoid discrimination, promote integration, and ensure effective communication. This requires adequate resources and preparation, joined by a shift in policy, practice, and values: to meet their antidiscrimination obligations, jails and prisons must offer choice and individuation well beyond what is typical in carceral environments. This Article offers a starting point for such efforts, summarizing the law and offering detailed policy recommendations for meeting its requirements and improving practices. The recommendations derive from litigation documents--including court opinions and settlement agreements--as well as workshops and interviews with advocates and experts. They are intended to fill the gap between the overarching requirements of federal antidiscrimination law and the granular policies and protocols--currently absent from most jails and prisons- needed to meaningfully implement these requirements., Introduction I. Federal Antidiscrimination Law A. Constitutional Protections B. Statutory Protections 1. No Disparate Treatment 2. The Reasonable Modification Requirement 3. The Effective Communication Requirement 4. The Integration Mandate 5. [...]

Washington State utilizes the Involuntary Treatment Act (ITA) to civilly commit individuals experiencing behavioral health crises. Although civil commitment involves stripping away fundamental rights, it receives less attention than criminal incarceration. The ITA is meant to protect not just the general community, but also the rights of people with behavioral health disorders who utilize the ITA system. Yet, its implementation tells a different story. Individuals in King County are detained and committed repeatedly, without receiving consistent care. Furthermore, the ITA disproportionately impacts unhoused individuals and Black individuals. As the ITA continues to grow both in utilization and expense, other community-based behavioral health interventions are unable to thrive. This is not just a social services issue: the implementation of the ITA in King County does not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act or Washington's constitutional duty to foster and support institutions for individuals who are 'mentally ill.' Implementation of civil commitment law in King County is ethically and legally questionable, and raises disturbing questions about civil commitment statewide. This Comment suggests that federal litigation may be necessary to persuade state and local governments to alter how they implement the ITA and to bring that implementation into alignment with state and federal disability law., INTRODUCTION In 2019, Michael's (1) mother took the stand to testify that she thought her son should be involuntarily committed. She was tearful as she explained that she could not [...]

This article examines Bey v. City of New York — a recent Second Circuit case where four Black firefights suffering from Pseudofolliculitis Barbae (a skin condition causing irritation when shaving which mostly affects Black men) challenged the New York City Fire Department's Clean Shave Policy — with an intersectional approach utilizing legal theories of racial, disability, and religious discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominance of 'cost narratives' in disability law and discourse warranted the inclusion of a scholarly roundtable discussion devoted to the topic. The transcription below captures this discussion among three [...]

INTRODUCTION 1905 I. DISABILITY FRAMES IN CONDITIONS OF CONFINEMENT LITIGATION 1910 A. Stigmatizing Disability Frames 1912 B. Productive Disability Frames 1916 II. DISABILITY RIGHTS AND DISABILITY JUSTICE MOVEMENTS: FROM PRISON [...]

Civil rights legal scholars and practitioners have lamented the constraints of the largely intent-based legal framework required to challenge racial discrimination and injustice. As a result, they have sought alternative methods that seemingly require less overt proof of discrimination and are more equipped to address structural harm. One of these proposed solutions involves the use of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)--due to its affirmative mandate to address discrimination by reasonable modification or accommodation--and the framing of issues of racial injustice in terms of disability or the deprivation of medical rights. Environmental justice, an area in which issues of both race and disability are salient and affect one another, is one such context in which advocates have tried to use the ADA to challenge broader structural harm. This Article analyzes cases in which practitioners have used the ADA to challenge issues of environmental injustice to examine the purported utility of the ADA, and disability and medicalization framing, more generally, in addressing structural racism and injustice. Specifically, I discuss the attempted use of the ADA to stop the construction of a petrochemical plant in 'Cancer Alley,' Louisiana and to challenge mold on behalf of public housing residents in New York City. The use of the ADA to challenge environmental injustice has clear legal and social justice narrative benefits that explain its appeal, including the required inclusion of people with disabilities in environmental justice campaigns that disproportionately impact them, but from which they are often left out--except for as examples of the negative consequences of harm. However, the promise of these legal theories has not been adequately tested to proffer the ADA as a true alternative to race-based civil rights laws, and there are many suggestions that it is not. Furthermore, the use of disability as both narrative harm and legal strategy in environmental justice campaigns raises important considerations for racism and ableism as interrelated institutional harms. Therefore, any attempt to expand the disability frame in this direction requires an understanding of racism that does not exclude or otherwise undervalue ableism and vice versa. Otherwise, we risk perpetuating the same problems., Introduction 1723 I. Environmental Justice as a Field of Advocacy 1726 A. History and Origins 1726 B. Environmental Justice and Public Health 1728 II. The Limitations of the Civil Rights [...]

In this Article, I argue that the requirement to claim status as an 'individual with a disability' to seek reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act undermines the advancement of structural reform that could promote broad conceptions of disability justice. I urge the reader to consider how the ADA could better advance disability justice if we focused on its ex ante requirements rather than the post hoc rules made possible by the statute's reasonable accommodation requirement. It makes more sense to build a society under the expectation that people with a range of disabilities will be part of our community than make one-at-a-time retrofits after someone identifies themself as disabled. One should not need to publicly claim disability to be treated with compassion and respect., INTRODUCTION 1814 I. The Reasonable Accommodation Concept 1820 A. The Statute 1820 B. The Case Law 1823 C. The Costs 1830 II. Critical Examination of Reasonable Accommodation Requirement 1835 A. [...]

'According to ADA Masks Not Required Anywhere in America!' (1) So read a flyer circulated on Facebook in the summer of 2020, as the global COVID-19 pandemic raged and mask [...]

INTRODUCTION I. ASYMMETRY SIX DECADES IN THE MAKING A. Asymmetry Regarding Remedies B. Asymmetry Regarding Causation Standards C. Should Asymmetry Be a Cause for Concern? II. PROBLEMS IN CROSS-STATUTE CLAIMS [...]

ABSTRACT There are over thirty million people ages forty-four to fifty-five in the civilian labor force in the United States, but the law and legal scholarship are largely silent about [...]

INTRODUCTION 305 I. AUTOMATED TOOLS AND GUIDELINES FOR WEB ACCESSIBILITY 308 A. GUIDELINES 310 B. AUTOMATED TOOLS 312 II. EXISTING LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR WEB ACCESSIBILITY 314 A. STATUTES 314 B. [...]

'A bove all, the [Americans with Disabilities Act] is about one clear and forth-right message: That discrimination of any kind has no place in America.... Discrimination no longer has a [...]

Table of Contents I. Foreword II. Introduction III. Background A. History and Scope of the ADA B. Age of the Internet: Access for the Visually Impaired C. (Un)Accessible: Continuing Barriers [...]

Autonomous vehicle (AV) technology can help disabled Americans achieve their desired level of mobility. However, realizing this potential depends on vehicle manufacturers, policymakers, and state and municipal agencies collaborating to accommodate the needs of disabled individuals at different stages of trip making through information system design, vehicle design, and infrastructure design. Integrating accessibility at this stage of the AV revolution would finally allow us an opportunity to develop a transportation system that treats accessibility as a guiding principle, not as an afterthought. This paper documents accessibility considerations for disabled individuals followed by a review of relevant Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations. The review of regulations is followed by a review of nine case studies, five corresponding to the on-demand microtransit service model and four corresponding to the paratransit service model. These case studies are essentially different prototypes currently being deployed on a pilot basis. Each of these specific case studies is then evaluated for its ability to provide potential accessibility features that would fulfill the requirement set forth by relevant ADA regulations in the absence of an operator/driver. Based on this review of relevant research, ADA regulations, and case studies, recommendations are provided for researchers, private firms, policymakers, and agencies involved in AV development and deployment. The recommendations include better collaboration and adoption of best practices to address the needs of individuals with different disability types (e.g., Cognitive, Visual, Auditory). ADA regulations should be used as one of the tools in addition to universal design principles and assistive technologies in order to maximize accessibility. • Explores how accessible autonomous vehicle (AAV) technology can co-evolve with disability regulation to meet needs through information systems, vehicle, and infrastructure design. • Evaluates case studies of emerging on-demand autonomous services to see how they meet relevant Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards in the US. • Offers that vehicle design might evolve to better meet standards in the areas of 1) Voice Controlled Systems and 2) Pick Up/Drop Off Point Orientation. • Challenges that, among other collaborative improvements, public agencies can digitize transit trip data to encourage greater multimodal integration of future AAV services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Menopause is not a punch line. (1) Menopause is defined by its relationship to menstruation--it is the cessation of menstruation. Medical texts identify menopause as part of the cycle of [...]

Constitutional Law--Supreme Court Expands Ministerial Exception to Lay Teachers at Catholic Elementary Schools--Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, 140 S. Ct. 2049 (2020). The First Amendment to the United [...]

The Americans with Disability Act sets forth the conditions under which management is compelled to respond to informal and formal requests for accommodations, one of which is that requests must relate to essential job functions. When requests do not relate to essential job functions, employer responsiveness becomes voluntary. The difference between compelled and voluntary management responsiveness to efforts by employees with disabilities to acquire workplace accommodations is import to the decision-making processes of employees with disabilitiess as is discussed here for the benefit of employees with disabilities, their supervisors, and advocates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a telephone survey of outpatient physicians in the U.S. to determine the extent to which they understand their legal obligations to patients under the American With Disabilities Act (ADA). Topics covered include their understanding of their responsibility in ensuring the provision of equitable care to patients with disability, their perceived risk of ADA lawsuits, and the associations among physician characteristics, their knowledge of ADA, and perceived lawsuit risk.

This article summarizes the facts and rulings of a recent representative federal appeals court decision concerning the legal claims of two school nurses who lost their positions after advocating on behalf of students with diabetes. Their primary claim was the anti-retaliation protection under the pair of federal laws prohibiting disability discrimination—Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The second of the two nurses additionally asserted protection under this pair of laws based on her own asserted disabilities. The discussion reveals the sometimes significant difference between legal requirements, as determined by appellate courts, and professional norms, as perceived by practitioners and professors in school nursing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]