Today is the anniversary of the Capitol Crawl, an event in 1990 in which disabled activists pulled themselves from their wheelchairs and quite literally crawled up the steps of the Capitol Building. This was done to protest the living conditions for disabled people in the United States, and it was done to pass the ADA. And fuck yeah, they did it.
These activists along with hundreds of others managed to secure rights for disabled Americans for decades to come. However, all that heroic work is now being threatened by H.R. 620.
I’ve been talking a lot about H.R. 620 lately because frankly, it scares the shit out of me. It’s a bill that’s designed to strip rights from people with disabilities, and it has already passed the House of Representatives.
A little background:
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990, the year I was born. Because of that, I have lived under its protections for just about my entire life. When my high school tried to prevent me from graduating because of my medical struggles, we were able to use the ADA to procure a 504 plan. When my dorms and classrooms were inaccessible, it was the ADA that got me accommodations. I am afforded extra assistance when traveling, when voting, at the doctor, and the only reason I can do any of these things is because of the ADA.
I now have a college diploma and a full-time job. I would have neither without the ADA. It’s not a perfect solution, but the protections it does provide have been invaluable in my life and the lives of my family. (My family members with a different disability have also Gone Through Some Shit but that’s really their story to tell.)
I think most of Americans know that some semblance of protections for PWD exist. I’m not sure most Americans understand how difficult they are to use. It’s not like the ADA provides, idk, inspectors who go around looking at buildings to see if they’re accessible. They don’t take complaints from PWD if the elevator in their building stopped working and their landlord won’t fix it. There is no safety & health inspector of the disabled world. The ADA is instead enforced via lawsuit.
To put it simply — if a disabled person has been discriminated against, they have the right to get a lawyer and sue the establishment that has discriminated against them. They cannot sue for damages. They can only get the place to change. (Though some courts have levied additional monetary damages for noncompliance.)
This is already a pretty arduous process. I mean, you have to get a lawyer and go to court. No one enjoys doing that, especially when you know there is no financial reward. But H.R. 620 aims to make this process much, much harder. It requires PWD to gather a ton of evidence and documentation, it requires a system of letter-writing and complaints, just a mess of things that many PWD will not have the time, money, energy, and/or know-how to be able to do.
More importantly, though, H.R. 620 changes how businesses need to comply. H.R. 620 aims to change it so a business or institution has six months before they even need to start showing a plan to change. I repeat. This is not six months before the work is done. This is six months before they even need to start moving. Six months would have been an entire semester when I was in college! And even then, all they need to do is show “progress”. Progress can mean anything! It sure doesn’t mean that I can get in the building!
In effect, this would strip PWD of their ability to actually have the ADA enforced. It puts a very onerous process on the back of the people being discriminated against so they’ll be too confused, tired, or burdened to exercise their rights in the first place. And then, if they get through that wholly unnecessary roadblock, the place they need to get into may not actually become accessible for — well, ever. There is no part of the desired amendments to the ADA that would actually require accessibility. Ever. Which is mind-blowing.
H.R. 620 is popular amongst business conglomerates and real estate developers, for obvious reasons. They don’t want to deal with the extra expenses that come with making their properties accessible. Because of this, they have started a misinformation campaign saying that PWD are using the ADA to attack small businesses with frivolous lawsuits, which puts undue burden on people ~just trying to make it~.
Wow, talking about what “burdens” PWD are. Like that’s not a misconception that leads to self-harm and discrimination every day.
There is no evidence that there is an outbreak of frivolous lawsuits. There are a couple lawyers who have been engaging in fraudulent lawsuits, but frankly, it’s not hard to find an unscrupulous lawyer, and none of them have been successful in court.
Even if there were some uncontrollable outbreak, taking away protections is not the way to deal with this. I can’t imagine this being the reaction to any other group’s civil rights. “Oh, well, some lawyer’s being a dick, better take away civil rights for an entire marginalized group just in case someone tries to abuse it!.” There are so many better ways to deal with misconduct than systematically stripping a marginalized group of its civil liberties.
Again, PWD CANNOT MAKE MONEY FROM THESE LAWSUITS. There is no one sitting in some wheelchair made of gold that they got from taking sandwich shops from cute grandparents who just wanted The American Dream (tm). This is a boogeyman that does not exist — but it does play into a lot of nasty stereotypes about disabled people.
It is telling and depressing both that PWD fighting for their right to live with the rest of society is being framed as “frivolous”. So many things that disabled people need are framed as frivolous every day. So many things people insist we don’t really need. This bill would deny us access to stores, hospitals, schools — you know, the things we need to survive. But even if it were just some shop down the road? The ability to live in equality with our peers IS NOT FRIVOLOUS. Our enforced separation from the rest of society has led to a series of abuses against us that can only be rectified if we are allowed to live lives as independently and openly as possible.
The ADA was passed almost thirty years ago. Properties that are not accessible have already had almost thirty years to fix this. Businesses aren’t given thirty years to make sure their fire safety measures are up to code. Restaurants aren’t given thirty years to make sure their health measures are up to code. This is a law that already wasn’t being enforced, and now you act like this is some new issue that’s onerous on property owners? Good lord. Historic buildings were already exempt — what, are y’all just waiting until every building is old enough to be historic? Jesus.
The long and short of it is that the businesses who make money off of our oppression are trying to turn us into the villains of the story so they can pass legislation that will remove their financial responsibilities and take away our civil rights.
H.R. 620 has already passed the House. It moves on to the Senate shortly. Please, please call your senators and tell them that you support the ADA and want them to vote against H.R. 620. So few people are even talking about this issue, but it is a matter of life and death for a lot of people. This, paired with our current administration’s other crimes against the elderly and disabled, is looking to make this country uninhabitable for PWD. And that’s terrifying.
Please help us.
(Note: If you’d like more info on H.R. 620, the ACLU has put out a handy guide on myths and misconceptions about the bill.)
