ADA Amendments Act of 2008 - Push For Changes

Push For Changes

In 2004, the National Council on Disability, an independent Federal agency charged with making recommendations to the President and Congress, issued a report called “Righting the ADA.” This report detailed the various ways in which the courts had misinterpreted Congressional intent and limited the reach of the ADA, and proposed legislative language to restore this intent. The most important misinterpretation identified in the report was the narrowing of the ADA’s definition of “disability” to exclude many individuals that Congress intended to protect from discrimination.

Over the course of 2006, the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) worked to develop consensus within the disability rights community regarding the strategy and substance of a bill that would fix the definition problem. On September 29, 2006, the last working day of the 109th Congress, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), then Chair of the United States House Committee on the Judiciary, and then-Minority Leader Steny Hoyer introduced H.R. 6258 (“ADA Restoration Act of 2006”) to “restore the intent of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 to more fully remove the barriers that confront disabled Americans.” The bill represented an important first step towards reform but was rejected by the committee.

On July 26, 2007, the 17th anniversary of the ADA’s passage, Majority Leader Hoyer, Representative Sensenbrenner, and Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced companion "ADA restoration" bills (H.R. 3195; S. 1881) that closely tracked a draft bill produced by the CCD and Congressional staff. On the day of the introduction of H.R. 3195, the bill had 143 co-sponsors in the House. Despite the number of House co-sponsors of the legislation, the business community and the Justice Department urged Members of Congress to oppose the ADA Restoration Act. Concerned that a partisan battle would damage the traditionally bi-partisan base of support for disability rights legislation, Congressional champions of the bill, including Majority Leader Hoyer, encouraged the disability community to meet with the business community and negotiate bill language that both communities would agree to defend through the entire legislative process.