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7/7/99, 10:56 amcdt

Victory in the U.S. Supreme Court
People with disabilities will be integrated

Now it is up to us to demand that Governor Don Sundquist obey the order of the Supreme Court. He has ignored the needs of the people of Tennessee since he was first elected. Sundquist has ignored the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, and has still failed to comply with the most simple steps of Title II. He has even ignored the reports of his own administration when Comptroller Snodgrass, years ago, warned of the "crisis in long-term care."

We can expect Sundquist to fight to continue to pass gifts and graft to his friends in the special interest lobby for nursing homes. The people of Tennessee need to speak clearly against our failure to provide reasonable and cost-effective care for people with disabilities.

Read the CITY REPORTER article from The Memphis Flyer. Debbie Gilbert does a fantastic job of explaining the recent Supreme Court cases.

CITY REPORTER - http://www.memphisflyer.com/backissues/issue541/cr541.htm -

Reaction Is Mixed To Supreme Court Disability Ruling

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on four cases that could drastically change enforcement of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and local reactions ranged from jubilation to wariness.

Memphis ADAPT, a disability-rights organization affiliated with the Memphis Center for Independent Living, declared a victory in the Olmstead v. L.C. decision, which ruled that two mentally disabled women in Georgia could not be forced to live in a state psychiatric hospital after their doctors judged them eligible for community-based care. For years, ADAPT has been lobbying the state of Tennessee to spend more of its federal Medicaid funds on home-care programs for the handicapped.

"It's five times less expensive than nursing homes, which is where Tennessee spends 95 percent of its long-term-care funding," says Tim Wheat, ADA coordinator at the Center for Independent Living. "The Olmstead decision, I hope, will have a major impact. In Tennessee, there are about 35,000 disabled in institutions who could be moved to home programs."

The other three Supreme Court decisions will have no impact on the severely disabled but could have a huge effect on those whose impairment is marginal. Basically, the Court said that if a person's disability is correctable -- for example, poor vision that can be "fixed" with eyeglasses -- then that person is not considered disabled under the ADA.

Employers were generally pleased with this ruling, since it could prevent a flood of discrimination lawsuits. Had the Court ruled in the opposite direction, some 160 million adult Americans could be considered "disabled."

"I'm sure there have been frivolous cases, but the ADA's definition of disability just invites controversy," says Dr. Thomas Miller, a professor of management at the University of Memphis. "The gray area has been very broad in the past, and this might narrow the range a bit."

However, the decision has created a paradox: Legions of workers who are disabled enough to be fired from a particular job, yet not disabled enough to sue for discrimination under the ADA. Such was the case with the two female pilots who could not get hired by United Airlines because they needed glasses. Since their vision with glasses is 20/20, they are not considered impaired under the new definition. Yet they were denied jobs because of their impairment.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the ADA, is not at all happy about the ruling. "The government's position," says Katharine Cores, regional attorney for the EEOC in Memphis, "was that you make the determination about a disability without considering mitigating measures that ameliorate the effects of impairment."

Cores emphasizes that the ADA is a civil-rights law. "When dealing with a law that has remedial purposes -- to correct a previous wrong -- it should be interpreted broadly."

No one has yet figured out how to address the issue of the "temporarily abled." Under the Supreme Court's definition, a diabetic whose condition is controlled with insulin is not disabled. But what if that person suddenly doesn't have access to insulin, or for some reason the treatment is no longer effective? How can someone have a life-threatening disability at certain times and not at others?

The Supreme Court's job is only to interpret the law as it exists; in order to clear up the confusion, Congress will have to rewrite the ADA to spell out exactly what it means by "disability."

In the meantime, says Cores, some pending ADA-discrimination lawsuits may be dismissed before the plaintiffs get their day in court. -- Debbie Gilbert

The Memphis Center for Independent Living
1633 Madison Avenue, Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 726-6404 v/tty (901) 726-6521 fax
mcil@mcil.org 

MCIL is a United Way of the Mid-South member Agency

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