33 Years After the Passage of the ADA, People with Disabilities Are Still Being Paid Below the Minimum Wage
By Megan Schuller & Jalyn Radziminski
On this 33rd anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), we reflect on our work to realize a society where people with mental disabilities live with autonomy, dignity, and opportunity in all aspects of life, including community living, health care, housing, education, and employment. These are the shared goals of the ADA, but there is still work to be done. This includes our ongoing fight to end subminimum wages for workers with disabilities.
Since long before the passage of the ADA, the Bazelon Center has fought against the exploitation and segregation of workers with disabilities. Title I of the ADA forbids employment discrimination on the basis of disability. Yet discrimination persists. One pervasive and entrenched example of this is the subminimum wage for workers with disabilities.
Employment helps all people, including people with mental disabilities, live independently, build personal relationships, and be involved in their communities. But as Bazelon Legal Director Megan Schuller put it: “Not all employment is created equal, at least not for people with disabilities.”
Despite the passage of the ADA in 1990, there are almost 50,000 Disabled workers earning below minimum wage today. For years, the Bazelon Center and its Board Chair Eve Hill have fought for fair and equal pay for people with disabilities and called for the end of subminimum wages. Many people harbor misconceptions that people with mental disabilities cannot work or handle the stress of work. Studies have consistently found that these assumptions are baseless.
While being recognized for her decades of outstanding leadership in disability law by TASH last week, Eve Hill called out the “entrenched prejudice” against people with disabilities that underlies their continued treatment as second-class citizens, not even worthy of (what is for everyone else) the minimum wage: “Now is the time for us — all of us — to work to end subminimum wage once and for all.”
As Schuller reflects, “The term itself doesn’t even make sense — how can there be a wage below the minimum? It implies the recipient is subhuman, unworthy of basic human rights and dignities afforded to others.” Yet Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act allows the U.S. Department of Labor to issue certificates to employers to be able to pay Disabled workers less than a minimum wage. Around 200 employers have pending 14(c) certificates. Most 14(c) workers earn less than $3.50 per hour and, because they work part-time, aren’t eligible for employer-sponsored health insurance. We once again raise our collective voices to call for the phasing out of Section 14(c).
“We pay some of the most vulnerable and exploited people in the world below the minimum wage — and it’s legal! And there’s no floor to what they can be paid — they can be paid pennies an hour,” explained Hill. “And worse, we pay them less than the minimum wage to work in segregated sheltered workshops — where they’re isolated from nondisabled people and their communities.”
A sheltered workshop is a segregated employment setting that primarily or exclusively employs people with disabilities, or where people with disabilities work separately from others. Workers in these settings are typically paid subminimum wages and are often subject to exploitation. The ADA requires states and local governments to “administer services, programs, and activities in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of qualified individuals with disabilities.” The U.S. Supreme Court, in Olmstead v. L.C. (Lois Curtis), held that needless segregation was a form of discrimination prohibited by the ADA. Courts and the U.S. Department of Justice have long confirmed that the ADA’s integration mandate applies to activities that promote employment. For example, it is discrimination to offer “sheltered workshops” to individuals who could be competitively employed if they received supported employment services.
The Bazelon Center and Eve Hill call on Congress to pass the Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act, pending legislation that would phase out Section 14(c) certificates and provide grants to help subminimum wage employees transition out of this workshop model. The Bazelon Center also calls on Congress to pass the Raise the Wage Act, which would eliminate subminimum wages for people with disabilities, youth, and tipped workers and raise the federal minimum wage for all workers. Together, we also call on the Department of Labor to stop issuing 14(c) certificates.
“The solutions are simple and effective,” said Schuller. “Pay people with disabilities fair wages and provide them with supported employment services and reasonable accommodations in the workplace. In other words, follow the ADA.”
Upon passing the ADA 33 years ago, Congress found that “the Nation’s proper goals regarding individuals with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency.” People with disabilities work and succeed in competitive jobs every day, and deserve equal pay and opportunities.
We will not rest until the promise of the ADA becomes reality.
About Eve Hill:
Eve Hill is Chair of the Bazelon Center’s Board of Trustees, where she has served since 2017. She is also a partner at Brown, Goldstein & Levy and founder of Inclusivity Strategic Consulting. Through her decades of experience and dedicated work implementing the ADA and other disability rights laws through consultation, technical assistance, training, guidance, and enforcement, Hill has made an enormous impact in the disability rights community. She was recently recognized by TASH with the 2023 Outstanding Leadership in Disability Law Award.
Among her many leadership roles, Hill has served as a senior federal government official at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division; as the Director of the District of Columbia’s Office of Disability Rights; and as Senior Vice President at the Burton Blatt Institute. Her career has spanned academia, nonprofits, and private practice. And as the co-author of a treatise and a casebook on the ADA, she literally wrote the book on disability rights law.
About the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law:
Established in 1972, The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is a national nonprofit legal advocacy organization that advances the rights of adults and children with mental disabilities through litigation, policy advocacy, public education, and technical assistance. The Bazelon Center advocates for equal opportunity for people with disabilities in all aspects of life, including community living, health care, education, employment, housing, parental and family rights, voting, and other areas, including guardianship and conservatorship. The Center uses cutting-edge litigation to effect progressive systemic change and impact public policy, including securing early legal precedents and creating basic civil rights for people with mental disabilities.
About the Authors:
Jalyn Radziminski is a Black and Japanese activist whose work is dedicated to advocating for racial equity, community-based mental health, and disability justice. Jalyn’s work is informed by their lived experience as a student and young professional with a mental health disability and over eight years of experience doing research and advocacy in the intersection of race, mental health, and mass incarceration. Jalyn is an evening law student at Fordham University School of Law and works full-time as the Director of Engagement at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, where they provide national legal strategy and policy support through community coalitions, call-to-action campaigns, and grassroots organizing.
Megan Schuller is the Bazelon Center’s Legal Director. Before joining Bazelon, she spent over a decade at the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act. She litigated high-impact cases and negotiated landmark agreements with state and local governments and large corporations to secure disability rights and reform public service systems. She served on White House panels and interagency working groups that addressed a wide array of civil rights issues. She received numerous DOJ awards for her work. The majority of her work challenged discrimination against people with mental disabilities — a longstanding commitment that she brings with her to the Bazelon Center.
