BAC Rutland

For civil rights lawyers who toiled through the 1980s in the increasingly barren fields of race and sex discrimination law, the approval of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 by a nearly unanimous U.S. House and Senate and a Republican President seemed almost fantastic. Within five years of the Act’s effective date, however, observers were warning of an unfolding assault on the ADA by federal judges, the media, and other national opinion-makers. A year after the Supreme Court issued a trio of decisions in the summer of 1999 sharply limiting the ADA’s reach, another decision invalidated an entire title of the act as it applied to the states. By this time, disability activists and disability rights lawyers were speaking openly of a backlash against the ADA.
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The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit in which the state of Arizona sought the installation of equipment needed to display captions and audio descriptions for people with sensory disabilities.
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People found not guilty by reason of insanity are sent to a state mental hospital. A new law will allow a state official to send mentally ill and dangerous defendants to prison instead of a hospital.

State lawmakers are concerned that mental hospitals are not always secure enough.

“It doesn’t reach the level of security that you would find in a maximum security prison,” says Richard Kellogg, with the Department of Social and Health Services.
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Disability advocacy groups are taking a wait and see approach with Elena Kagan who the president nominated to the Supreme Court on Monday.

Kagan, who currently serves as the country’s solicitor general, will replace Justice John Paul Stevens if she is confirmed by the Senate. A former Harvard Law School dean, Kagan has never been a judge. She would be the court’s youngest member at age 50 and the fourth woman to serve on the court.
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2010 theme celebrates workforce diversity and workers with disabilities

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy today unveiled the official theme for October’s National Disability Employment Awareness Month: “Talent Has No Boundaries: Workforce Diversity INCLUDES Workers With Disabilities.” The theme serves to inform the public that workers with disabilities represent a diverse and vibrant talent pool for hire.
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Day 74 – Founding of the First Center for Independent Living

In the early 1960s the University of California, Berkeley was not exactly the progressive institution that we think of today. Though the spirit that would come to define one of America’s most free-thinking and inclusive universities was present, at this time, this spirit did not include people with disabilities. 1962, Ed Roberts successfully sued the University of California for refusing him admittance to college. Once at Berkeley, he became a well-known leader of the disability rights movement and created a significant path for change for the university and the country.
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TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Lonnie Acton’s lifeless body sat in a wheelchair fastened to the floor of a mangled minibus. No shoulder or lap belt protected him.

Those restraints, attached to the bus, are specially made to secure passengers in their wheelchairs. They weren’t being used when a tractor-trailer slid across a snowy highway and slammed into the bus in January, killing Acton and two other residents of a special-needs center in western Ohio.
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WASHINGTON — A huge fight has erupted over rules issued by the Obama administration to enforce a 2008 law that requires equal insurance coverage for the treatment of mental and physical illnesses.

The fight offers a taste of the coming battle over rules to remake the health care system under legislation pushed through Congress by President Obama.
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In her first week at a new job, Emily Kysel suffered an allergy attack so severe that she had to go home early one day. A co-worker was eating buffalo wings at her desk, and the wings contained paprika, to which Ms. Kysel, 24, has a rare and potentially fatal allergy.

She nearly died five years ago from eating chili, and since then her allergy has sent her to the emergency room five times and caused her to jab herself with an anti-allergy injection 11 times, sometimes from just inhaling paprika nearby.
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When Edna Fairbanks-Williams found herself abandoned with five young children almost 50 years ago, she accepted a friend’s loan to buy an old Ford, then made the money back driving around scrubbing other people’s cottages and sewing other people’s clothes.

“My friend said, ‘Give it to someone else that could use it,’” she recalled after trying to repay the favor. “I did, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
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