Individuals with disabilities make up the most recent large class of persons to be given legal protection from discrimination in the employment relationship.
The Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities by federal government employers and employers that are federal contractors or grant recipients.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), enacted in 1990, expanded those same protections to individuals working for private employers.
Like the earlier Civil Rights Act of 1964, the protections of the ADA are not confined to the employment relationship.
The ADA also prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities by “public accommodations,” including many private and public entities that provide goods and services to the public.
The ADA does not simply require an employer to treat disabled individuals equally to persons without disabilities but, in addition, requires the employer to act affirmatively to make its workplace accessible and amenable to persons with disabilities. Because these “proactive” type of protections do not have parallels in Title VII, their full extent is still being developed through the gradual process of litigating individual cases in the courts.
Protections provided by the ADA
Like Title VII, the ADA protects persons with disabilities from being discriminated against on the basis of their disabilities in all aspects of the employment relationship. ADA cases may be brought against employers based on both disparate-treatment and disparate-impact theories.
The ADA also requires employers to proactively act to end discrimination caused by barriers in the workplace to employment of the disabled or to their being able to perform jobs to the full extent of their abilities. These barriers include physical obstacles to disabled persons working, such as entrances to workplaces that cannot be accessed by people with wheelchairs.
They also include barriers inherent in how a job is structured by an employer, such as including non-essential duties having the effect of screening out disabled persons in the “requirements” of a position.