The Struggle for the Rights of Disabled Persons
by Carlton Martz
The movements for the rights of disabled people emerged in the 20th century, reflecting a history of disabled people’s struggle and determination. Toward the end of the century, the enactment of the landmark law called the Americans with Disabilities Act was a major breakthrough.
Disabilities are varied. They can be sensory (such as blindness or deafness); physical (like an inability to walk); mental (such as schizophrenia); or developmental (like various kinds of learning difficulties or nervous-system conditions).
Through modern medicine, we have greater scientific understanding of disabilities today. And largely thanks to the disability rights movement, today many view discrimination against disabled people as more disabling than any sensory, physical, or mental condition.
Throughout much of U.S. history, however, blindness, deafness, and other inherited or acquired disabling conditions were considered personal defects. We will now take a look at how acceptance and treatments of people with disabilities have changed in U.S. history.
Early History of Disability in the U.S.
In Colonial America, settlers from Europe favored the “able-bodied” and generally restricted immigration of people with disabilities. Disabled persons born in the colonies were the responsibility of the family or community. Communities often confined them to workhouses where they made simple items for sale.
In 1773, Virginia opened the first hospital (called an “asylum”) for treating people with mental illness. This hospital served as a shelter where supposed treatments were crude and harsh, including bloodletting (a common medical practice at the time), immersion in cold water, and chaining patients to walls.
An important step forward occurred in 1817 when Thomas Gallaudet and others founded an asylum for people with deafness and muteness (inability to speak). This asylum is considered the nation’s first school for people to try to overcome their disabilities. Schools for blind people, mentally ill people, and others spread quickly.
During the Civil War, around 476,000 soldiers were wounded. Of those, over 60,000 had to have limbs amputated by doctors, which was the state of wartime medicine. Some of these veterans required prosthetics (artificial limbs) or wheelchairs.
Doctors also began to recognize veterans’ psychological problems resulting from their battlefield experiences. Established in 1852, St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., was a prominent care facility for Civil War veterans suffering from psychological distress. It was the United States’ first federally funded mental hospital.
After the Civil War
By the late 1800s, large state-operated institutions where disabled people were isolated from the rest of the population became common. These institutions were frequently little more than warehouses for disabled people where they received little meaningful treatment. Some institutions housed workers who lost fingers, arms, and hands on the job from industrial machinery.
Many veterans of World War I returned home physically and mentally disabled, especially suffering from that war’s use of bombs. Soldiers frequently suffered from “shell shock,” a traumatic reaction to the overwhelming sound of explosions. Shell-shocked soldiers suffered nightmares, confusion, tremors, and even loss of sight or hearing.
An epidemic of the disease poliomyelitis, or “polio,” broke out in New York City in 1916. It quickly spread to other parts of the nation. Polio paralyzes the nervous system and can be either deadly or severely disabling. (Through vaccines, polio was eradicated in the U.S. in 1979.)
Though children are especially vulnerable, Franklin D. Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down from polio as an adult in 1921. As president during the Great Depression, Roosevelt could walk short distances with leg braces but also used a wheelchair. Due to discriminatory attitudes against disabled people, Roosevelt — an extremely popular president — was not generally presented in public, in the press, or on film with his wheelchair visible.
One of the main agencies of Roosevelt’s New Deal was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which oversaw helping jobless Americans find employment. WPA policy was to label disabled people as “unemployable.” In protest, several people with disabilities in New York City held a sit-in for nine days in 1935 at the local relief office. Eventually, their protests pressured the WPA to create 1,500 jobs for disabled people in New York City.
Roosevelt was also president during World War II. That war brought home a new wave of disabled veterans who were less willing to just accept pre-war, warehouse-like institutions for housing. In addition, during the war, a labor shortage in the U.S. resulted in the hiring of many disabled persons for the assembly lines needed to manufacture airplanes, tanks, and ammunition.
Steps Forward in the Law
After the war, veterans’ groups and others began to question the practice of placing disabled persons in institutions. They called for independent living in the community, employment, and the constitutional right of equal protection of the law. Advocates argued that disabled persons deserved civil rights alongside racial minorities and women, who also were demanding greater recognition of their rights.
The first significant federal bill was presented to President Richard Nixon in 1972. The bill declared that no disabled person could be “excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
President Nixon vetoed the bill. He said it would be too expensive and would require increased taxes. He argued that “simply throwing money at problems does not solve anything.” His veto provoked the young activist Judy Heumann into action.
Heumann suffered polio as a young child and had to use a wheelchair for most of her life. In 1970, the 22-year-old Heumann passed her exams to become a teacher in New York but was denied her license because of her physical disability. She sued the state and became the first wheelchair user to become a teacher in New York.
In 1973, Heumann would not accept Nixon’s argument about the costliness of the law. She led a protest with about 60 others in the nation’s capital. Nixon finally signed the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 into law. State and local governments, public schools, colleges, many private businesses, and other organizations that received federal funds were covered under this law.
The federal Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) passed in 1975 (originally titled the Education for All Handicapped Children Act). This law provides “a free appropriate public education” for all students, including special education and related services for disabled students’ needs. IDEA requires a written plan for each disabled child that includes learning goals and as much integration in regular school programs as possible.
Passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 had many inadequacies. The law and its regulations did not clearly define barriers faced by disabled persons in their daily lives or ways to eliminate or even modify any barriers.
In 1988, a new comprehensive law was proposed in Congress: the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In that same year, senators heard testimonies from disabled people and their families who described the barriers they experienced in their lives. They described architectural barriers, such as the lack of ramps for wheelchairs, as well as communication barriers that affected people with vision and hearing impairments. The senators also heard from them about incidents of prejudice.
For two more years, members of Congress heard testimonies and debated the ADA. By 1990, over 40 million Americans were disabled in some way. However, some business owners still objected to the expense of making changes necessary to tear down or modify barriers to people with disabilities.
On March 12, 1990, as Congress debated the ADA, hundreds of disabled persons and their allies assembled at the steps of the Capitol Building. Many abandoned their wheelchairs, crutches, and canes and literally crawled up the steps of the Capitol. They shouted “I want to be treated like a human being!” and chanted “ADA Now!”. The “Capitol Crawl” gained nationwide attention.
Meanwhile, inside the Capitol, one senator made a big difference. This was Sen. Robert Dole, a Republican from Kansas and World War II veteran who had lost the use of his right arm in combat. Dole mounted a campaign to lobby businesses and his fellow senators for passage of the ADA.
Dole negotiated compromises so that accommodations to help the disabled had to be “reasonable” and small businesses could qualify for tax credits. Congress passed the ADA in May 1990, and President George H. W. Bush signed it into law on July 26, 1990.
What the ADA Says
The ADA had two clear purposes: (1) creating a “national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities” and (2) providing “enforceable standards” to address that discrimination.
For the first time, Congress enacted a legal definition of disability. The ADA defined disability as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual.” However, “life activities” themselves were not defined in the ADA.
The Supreme Court and the ADA
In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the ADA was constitutional. George Lane was a paraplegic man (his legs were paralyzed) and wheelchair-user in Tennessee. He was charged with two misdemeanor crimes. The courthouse had no elevator, however, so to attend his own trial he had to crawl up two flights of stairs. He sued the state under the ADA. The Supreme Court held that courthouses must be made more accessible.
However, in other decisions the Supreme Court limited the definition of disability. In 2002, the court decided that a worker who claimed she was disabled but who could do ordinary life tasks, like household chores, was really not disabled. This decision eliminated coverage of large numbers of workers by the ADA.
In 2008, Congress amended the ADA to broaden the definition of disability that the Supreme Court had narrowed. The amendments stated that a disability is a substantial limitation of a person’s “major life activity.” Major life activities include seeing, hearing, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, reading, communicating, and working. In expanding the meaning of disability, the amendments increased the number of people covered by the ADA.
‘Reasonable Accommodations’
As a result of the original 1990 law, 2008 amendments, and other changes to the ADA made by Congress, the current ADA requires that disabled persons have a right to “reasonable accommodations.” This means removing or lessening barriers that prevent them from participating in all aspects of society.
Private Employment
Employers with 15 or more workers must make reasonable accommodations to enable disabled persons to do a job. For example, an employer may have to modify an assembly line to allow a worker in a wheelchair to do a job sitting that is usually done standing. However, the employer would not be required to make accommodations that are an undue hardship (too difficult or too costly) for the employer. The ADA also prohibits discrimination against disabled persons in hiring, promotion, firing, pay, and job training.
Government Agencies
The ADA prohibits discrimination against disabled persons in all state and local government agencies, schools, and public transportation. All programs and services must be accessible to those with disabilities. Buses, trains, and airplanes must be made accessible to the disabled by ramps, wheelchair lifts, special seating, and signs. Public restrooms must have stalls equipped for ease of use by disabled persons.
Businesses Serving the Public
ADA requirements for accessibility and against discrimination apply to nearly all private businesses that serve the public. Examples include hotels, restaurants, theaters, stores, hospitals, amusement parks, sports stadiums, private schools, and colleges. The restrictions we saw above regarding undue hardship apply.
Enforcement
The 1990 ADA placed the burden on the individual claiming discrimination to file a lawsuit. Today, however, the U.S. Department of Justice enforces the law by filing lawsuits against those accused of violating the ADA. But other federal agencies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission may also become involved. Sometimes lawsuits are filed by private individuals after complaints have been made to a relevant federal agency.
Disabled Persons in the U.S. Today
According to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2019), 41.1 million Americans are disabled, or 12.72 percent of the population. Census data also showed that the most common disability is difficulty in mobility or moving around on one’s own (6.86 percent). This is followed by cognition or difficulty learning or understanding (5.20 percent). Other major types of disability involve hearing (3.56 percent), the ability to care for oneself (2.64 percent), and vision (2.31 percent).
The Census Bureau reported in 2017 that over nine million workers age 16 and older in the United States had a disability. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2018 that the frequency of disability was higher among women, American Indians/Alaskan Natives, adults below the poverty level, and persons living in the South. In 2018, the National Center for Educational Statistics found that only 22 percent of disabled students who graduated from high school were employed.
Questions for Discussion
1. With every proposed piece of legislation for disability rights, critics have argued that the changes would be too expensive. How were these concerns addressed in the examples in the article? If you were a lawmaker, how would you address those concerns?
2. Describe what a “reasonable accommodation” might be for a worker in each of the following circumstances (you may need to do a little research):
a) A paraplegic person who uses a wheelchair and who works at a public library.
b) A person diagnosed with a learning disability who works as a restaurant manager.
c) A deaf person who is a courtroom attorney.
d) A blind person who is a pharmacist.
3. Review the last section of the article on disabled people in the U.S. today. What do you think should be the top priority of lawmakers in protecting the rights of disabled Americans?
This article was originally published in BRIA, the quarterly curricular magazine of Teach Democracy (formerly Constitutional Rights Foundation). Click here for a high-school classroom activity on this article, as well as a source list for the article. You can also subscribe to BRIA for free here.
