House Resolution 620, introduced in January by Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, will unduly restrict the freedoms of disabled Americans and weaken the American Disabilities Act.
In a recent press release, the ACLU stated that the resolution, described as an ADA education and reform act, “removes any incentive for businesses to comply proactively with the ADA” by limiting disabled people’s ability to seek legal action against businesses and public establishments that are inaccessible due to some form of physical barrier.
The ACLU is also one of the 236 organizations that have cosigned a letter urging the rejection of H.R. 620 that was sent to the House Judiciary Committee. The committee voted to advance the resolution anyway.
If the resolution is eventually passed, disabled people will be required to provide business owners with a written notice detailing the address of the property, the specific ADA sections alleged to have been violated, whether a request for assistance in removing an architectural barrier was made and whether the barrier was permanent or temporary.
Even after the written notice has been submitted, all the business owner must do to avoid litigation is “provide the person with a written description outlining improvements that will be made to remove the barrier,” according to the text of the proposed resolution.
The only times disabled people will be able to pursue legal action are if the business fails to provide a description of its planned improvements or if the business fails to make “substantial progress” towards removing the barrier.
Instead of immediately being at risk of litigation for failing to comply to Title III of the ADA, which prohibits discrimination against disabled people, businesses will now have months or even years of feet-dragging, lollygagging and bureaucratic leeway before suffering from any actual consequences, and all while still remaining inaccessible to the disabled person.
The deadline for compliance is currently set at an absurdly long 180 days, the definition of “substantial progress” seems horribly ambiguous and this entire sequence of events isn’t even initiated until a disabled person provides the business with a correctly formulated written notice.
It is clear that this resolution does nothing but hinder the progress of all those working to create a truly equal nation.
This wouldn’t be the first time the Trump Administration has demonstrated blatant disregard for the lives of disabled Americans.
The administration has removed contact information and fact sheets about disability from the White House website and is still actively pursuing Affordable Care Act overhauls that would cause the cost of disabled people’s insurance costs to skyrocket or eliminate their coverage completely.
Trump himself, of course, received harsh criticism after cruelly mocking New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a form of congenital joint contracture called arthrogryposis, during one of his campaign speeches last November.
The majority of this administration’s rhetoric and legislative action has been focused on oppressing anyone who is not an able-bodied white male, and H.R. 620 is no different.
The resolution will be moving to a full House floor vote in the near future. Call your representatives and ensure that H.R 620 will not receive their votes. We are a nation that claims to provide liberty and justice for all. Let us try to make such an ideal our reality.
jhoffer@indiana.edu
@jhoffer17
