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Employment Law
Congress Amends ADA to Broaden Protections for More Disabled Workers
On September 25, 2008 President Bush signed the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 ("ADA-AA"), which will broaden the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act for more workers with disabilities. The ADA-AA was the result of bipartisan efforts and was supported by advocacy groups for both employers and employees. The legislation overrules several rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States that had diminished both the protections of the ADA, and the scope of workers with disabilities whom the ADA protected. For instance, the ADA-AA overrules the Supreme Court's decision in Sutton v. United Airlines, Inc., which allowed a court to consider mitigating measures, such as medications or prosthetic devices, in determining whether a person has a disability. The ADA-AA also overrules the Supreme Court's decision in Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. v. Williams, under which the Court set forth an exacting standard that further limited the scope of persons protected under the ADA. These cases left many capable and qualified workers who had been discriminated against because of their disability without jobs and without recourse. In addition, these cases resulted in significant litigation in the federal courts regarding whether a person had a disability so as to be protected under the ADA, and not whether the person had been the victim of unlawful discriminatory practices. In enacting the ADA-AA, Congress intended to move the focus of these cases back to the behavior at issue, and whether it was discriminatory, and away from whether a person was "disabled enough" to have federal protection.
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