33 Years and Still So Much Work Must be Done: A Reflection on the ADA at 33
On July 26, 2023, the Americans with Disabilities Act turned 33, but disabled people still face exclusion and discrimination.
By Jordyn Jensen, Jamelia Morgan, and Nicholas Lawson
Yesterday marked 33 years since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law on July 26, 1990, by President George Bush. The passing of the ADA is a result of years of organizing, direct action, activism, and key events that comprise the disability rights movement. Central to the disability rights movement was the independent living movement which formally started in Berkley, California in the 1970s following the establishment of the first Center for Independent Living (CIL) in 1972. However, the movement started long before its “official” establishment.
In 1973, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act became the first disability civil rights law to be passed in the United States making it illegal for federal agencies, public universities, and other public institutions receiving federal funds to discriminate on the basis of disability. However, these protections were not immediate, and the lack of change led to the 504 sit-ins in 1977. During the 26-day 504 sit-ins, people with disabilities and disability rights organizations occupied federal buildings in the United States and demanded for the federal government to issue regulations to implement Section 504.
Countless other events, organizations, and disabled people contributed to the direct action and activism that eventually led to the passing of the ADA in 1990. By signing the ADA into law, Congress made a promise to eliminate disability-based discrimination by “provid[ing] a clear and comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities,” and “provid[ing] clear, strong, consistent, enforceable standards addressing discrimination against individuals with disabilities”.
Yet, 33 years after the passing of the ADA, disabled people, especially disabled people of color, still face outright exclusion and discrimination. Although the ADA has made a significant impact in protecting the civil rights of disabled people, by some accounts, it has not led to radical social change, nor addressed the historical and ongoing racial, class, and gender-based disparities, discrimination, policing, and deprivations affecting the material and social conditions that impact the daily lives of people with disabilities. In fact, it has been made clear that the promises of the ADA, including protection from discrimination, equal access, and inclusion, are not rights guaranteed equally to all disabled people, especially multiply marginalized disabled people of color. If anything, the ADA — its mandate and its promises for a more inclusive society — remains underenforced despite the prevalence of individual and structural forms of ableism in society including the following:
Disabled people, particularly people of color with disabilities, are policed and criminalized. Disabled people of color are targeted in public spaces through aggressive policing strategies and make up a disproportionate number of police killings. In addition, disabled people of color are overrepresented in jails, prisons, and other carceral settings.
States continue to deny disabled people their reproductive rights. Thirty-one states still have laws allowing the forced sterilization of disabled people, removing their ability to have babies without their consent. Black women with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (I/DD) are the most impacted by these laws.
States also continue to exclude whole classes of disabled voters, particularly those voters with I/DD, from voting. In fact, 13 states have laws that bar disabled people “under guardianship” from voting and 22 states bar disabled people from voting if a judge perceives them as lacking the capacity to vote.
Disabled people remain less likely to graduate when compared to their non-disabled peers. They are subjected to discipline, suspension, and punishment at disproportionately high rates. Students with psychiatric disabilities and students of color are particularly vulnerable to in-school policing through threat assessments, crisis intervention programs, and other forms of surveillance, and often tracked into the criminal legal system on account of behaviors criminalized in schools. The rate of law enforcement referrals for students reveals clear intersectional marginalization, rising from 36 of 10,000 students for White students, to 88 for Native-American students, 93 for Black students, and 113 for students with disabilities, and soars to 221 for Black boys with disabilities, and 235 for Native-American boys with disabilities. Additionally, private and public colleges and universities fail to provide reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities, forcing them to take leaves of absence, or drop out of the program.
Individuals with disabilities also live in poverty at higher rates than nondisabled people. As a group, disabled people live with persistent income insecurity and have high rates of unemployment. These inequities are exposed by the ongoing housing crisis that has forced unhoused disabled people to live on the streets, unsheltered, where they are vulnerable to aggressive quality-of-life policing by local jurisdictions. Black people, many of whom have disabilities, are particularly vulnerable to these policing tactics.
Disabled people are often denied outright access to medical services in clinical settings because physicians are unwilling to provide them with reasonable accommodations. Ableism among physicians is well-documented. When it comes to accessing health care, disabled people of color face significant disparities. They are more likely to be misdiagnosed and receive lower quality treatment. LGBTQIA+ people with disabilities also encounter mistreatment and discrimination in health care settings. American Indians and Alaskan Natives have higher rates of disabilities and chronic illness than all other ethnic groups, yet Indian Health Services are not accessible and vastly underfunded.
Examining disability rights and the ADA from an intersectional lens allows us to recognize that disabled people of color are not protected by the ADA to the same extent as White disabled folks with education and class privilege. It is imperative that disability rights law moves from a focus on disability rights to disability justice.
The ADA was a tremendous achievement for the disability rights movement, but it has not yet reached its full potential. It can and should be enforced to account for the structural inequities, violence, and harms we identified above. However, the ADA is not the only tool. Advocates for disability justice are pushing for more radical interventions to push beyond access and inclusion and towards new horizons where all bodies and minds are whole and able to thrive. Thirty-three years after the ADA’s passage, supporters for the movement for disability rights should support these efforts and push for the radical new world that disability justice advocates aim to build.
For more information on disability justice, visit Sins Invalid’s “What is Disability Justice?”
Jordyn Jensen is the Executive Director of the Center for Racial and Disability Justice at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Jamelia Morgan is a Professor of Law and the Founding Faculty Director of the Center for Racial and Disability Justice at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Nicholas D. Lawson, M.D., J.D. is the Strategic Advisor for the Center for Racial and Disability Justice at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
The Northwestern Pritzker Law Center for Racial and Disability Justice (CRDJ) is a first-of-its-kind center dedicated to promoting justice for people of color, people with disabilities, and individuals at the intersection of race and disability.
Learn more about CRDJ by visiting the Center for Racial and Disability Justice webpage.
