ADA Update

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Public Transportation for All – Paratransit 30 Years After the ADA

September 15, 2020

Advocates in wheelchairs who flew to Washington, DC to press for disability civil rights in the 1970s rode to lobbying meetings in the back of a moving truck. There was no accessible public transit.[1] Brand new buses were not accessible. Even though people had designed wheelchair-accessible vehicles decades earlier, neither public nor private transit companies used them.[2] The ADA (and a predecessor, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973) changed…

ADA Update

Can Barriers to Wheelchair Access Be “Grandfathered In”?

By Maia Goodell

September 8, 2020

When I talk about my cases with friends, one of the most common questions is whether old buildings are exempt from ADA requirements. Many lawyers—including me—used to call this idea a “Grandfather Clause.” I stopped using that phrase after I learned its racist history, but on reflection the analogy to disability barriers may be apt. In the post-slavery era, states passed laws designed to stop Black men from exercising their new constitutional right…

ADA Update

Laws to Fight COVID Stigma

By Maia Goodell

August 26, 2020

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“I call it COVID shaming… It’s a real thing that happens. It happened to me for weeks after my healing. The Rev. Shane Harris, president of the People’s Alliance for Justice According to the CDC, we must fight stigma during this COVID pandemic—against people who have, or have recovered from COVID, and against ethnic groups wrongly blamed for or seen as carriers of the virus. Asian and Asian-American people, historically marginalized as “foreign,”…

ADA Update

Bike Lanes Can Create Disability Barriers

By Maia Goodell

August 19, 2020

I’m an avid bicyclist. I’ve ridden the NYC Century, the full 100-mile tour of four New York City boroughs. I pedal the 13 miles to my office in Brooklyn regularly. And I love the protected bike lanes that help me do it. But redesigning streets and parks just for bicycles can create problems for people with disabilities: parking and bus stops become inaccessible, bollards block travel for wheelchairs, or changed pedestrian patterns are…

ADA Update

What the ADA Means to Lawyers

By Maia Goodell

July 31, 2020

It has been a month of reflections about the ADA, signed into law 30 years ago last Sunday by President George H.W. Bush. Taking in the many perspectives on what the law has and has not done, I found myself thinking about something basic, yet rarely discussed: How does the ADA affect my work as a lawyer? Lawyers’ Duties to Clients A lawyer’s job in an attorney-client relationship is, with few exceptions, to represent…

ADA Update

Community Integration

By Maia Goodell

July 22, 2020

Community is a form of medicine, writes Rachel Setzer. She found healing in reconnecting with her Cherokee Ancestors’ traditions: You are here, you are part of your community, you should be counted and cared for, and society has to be adjusted to help you get your needs met. Accommodations for your disabilities are your birthright because you were born and are still alive. Rachel Setzer, Disability Visibility Project Setzer challenges the “notion that one not…

ADA Update

Social Distancing Business Renovations Can Help Wheelchair Access

By Maia Goodell

July 15, 2020

In the wake of CDC guidelines and changing attitudes about public space, many businesses—restaurants, shops, offices, theaters—are making the best of shutdowns, and perhaps taking advantage of government funding, to reshape their spaces for the “new normal.” This reshaping is an opportunity to ensure ADA accessibility. We may think the last thing businesses need now is one more worry, but during renovations is exactly the moment to meet the ADA’s requirements—and welcome all potential…

ADA Update

Mental Health Parity

By Maia Goodell

July 9, 2020

With physical risks dominating the news and our imaginations, it can be easy to forget the equally urgent mental health risks, as Andrew Solomon noted at the outset of the Coronavirus pandemic. A little-known law requires many insurance plans to give equal treatment to mental health in their coverage. Under the federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, mental health and addiction treatment must be covered the same as medical treatment. “Essentially, the Parity…

ADA Update

Sidewalk Accessibility and Racial Justice

By Maia Goodell

July 2, 2020

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The fight for accessible sidewalks has a long history in the disability community, challenging barriers like steep, broken, or missing curb cuts; broken pavement; tables or other objects that narrow the sidewalk so a person cannot pass in wheelchair. Longer still, and perhaps less well known to disability rights lawyers, is the history of sidewalk barriers in racial injustice. Sidewalk Inequality For Cedric Murphy in Shreveport, Louisiana, the link was direct: Police ticketed Mr. …

ADA Update

Sidewalk Accessibility and Racial Justice

By Maia Goodell

July 2, 2020

ADA Update

Disability Law News & Analysis

Blog Authors

Public Transportation for All – Paratransit 30 Years After the ADA

Can Barriers to Wheelchair Access Be “Grandfathered In”?

Laws to Fight COVID Stigma

Bike Lanes Can Create Disability Barriers

What the ADA Means to Lawyers

Community Integration

Social Distancing Business Renovations Can Help Wheelchair Access

Mental Health Parity

Sidewalk Accessibility and Racial Justice

Sidewalk Accessibility and Racial Justice

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