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Home / Album / Tag unconstitutional 2
ADAPT (97)
Rocky Mountain News, Tues., Oct. 19, 1992 Denver, Colo. RTD seeks to nullify handicap law By SUE LINDSAY News Staff Another skirmish in the ongoing battle waged by Denver’s handicapped to gain access to the city's bus system was staged Monday in Denver District Court, with the Regional Transportation District asking the court to declare the Colorado Handicapped Act unconstitutional. An organization of the handicapped has asked Judge Harold D. Reed to order RTD to purchase no buses that won't accommodate the handicapped and to retrofit older buses according to an agreement reached during a federal court case in 1979. The district court suit, filed in January, was triggered by RTD’s purchase of 89 buses to be delivered in 1983 without wheelchair lifts. RTD is trying to sidestep the provisions of that agreement, arguing that the federal regulations on which it was based no longer exist. RTD also wants the judge to declare the Colorado Handicapped Act unconstitutional because it is overbroad and too vague to be followed. THE JUDGE HEARD arguments by both sides Monday and said he will rule on the matter Nov. 9. Lawrence D. Stone, an attorney representing RTD, argued that the Colorado Handicapped Act is merely an expression of the Legislature's intention of how the handicapped should be treated. Stone argued that the statute prohibits discrimination but doe§n’t require any specific “affirmative actions” — such as buying only buses that contain wheelchair lifts. “The Legislature intended to enact the statute simply as an encouragement for the handicapped to be brought into the mainstream of society," Stone said. “They were encouraging rather than mandating better service for the handicapped. Any efforts are voluntary, and the voluntary efforts of RTD have been substantial.” Stone said that 50 percent of RTD buses are accessible to the handicapped during rush hour and all of them are during non-peak hours of operation. Stone also argued that the statute, which sets maximum criminal misdemeanor penalties of up to 60 days in jail and a $100 fine, is too vague and too broad to be enforced. Stone said the act doesn’t specifically define who is included and what must be done to comply with the statute. “We must guess at its meaning,” Stone said. "lt is clear that the act is a declaration of state policy. But is it a crime to fail to heed a policy of the state?” Stone argued that, apart from the Colorado statute, lawyers for the handicapped have misconstrued the meaning of a stipulation signed by RTD to resolve a federal suit over the handicapped buses issue. John Holland, an attorney representing the Atlantis Community, which filed the suit, said he and his clients understood that RTD was agreeing to purchase buses with wheelchair lifts and retrofit all buses purchased after February 1977 in compliance with federal regulations in effect at the time. Stone said RTD merely agreed that its “intention” was to achieve accessibility at the earliest practical date. He argued that RTD never promised that all of its buses would accommodate the handicapped. Calling the dispute “a legal and political war between the disabled and RTD," Holland said, "There was no doubt whatsoever that RTD knew for certain (that) what the plaintiffs wanted was total accessibility of buses. This has been our consistent demand everywhere. It's very simple what the agreement means. lt means that all buses must be made wheelchair accessible.” HOLLAND CHARGED THAT RTD was trying to weasel out of the agreement because the federal regulation in effect at the time it was reached has changed. At the time, federal regulations made it mandatory that new buses accommodate the handicapped. The mandatory regulation was dropped in July 1981, leaving the earlier regulation in force that encourages localities to do this and provides federal funding for the wheelchair lifts. “RTD made an agreement with us, and now RTD argues that it should not be bound by the settlement but to the law as it evolves and changes," Holland said. Reed called the stipulation “about as unclear a stipulation as I’ve ever read in my life. I don’t know what it means yet." The judge wondered aloud whether the parties had purposely used “tortured language” to solve the immediate problem, knowing they would wind up back in court.
ADAPT (105)
Denver Post 1/82 PHOTO (no credit given): A man in a wheelchair (Stephen Saunders) is tipped back in a wheelie by one man, as another bends forward over his legs and reaches down on the side of his wheelchair. Behind them a couple of police officers are visible. Caption reads: Stephen Saunders is carried away from the offices of the Regional Transportation District during a January protest over an RTD decision to not make some new buses accessible to the handicapped. [Headline] RTD Fighting Handicapped Act By Howard Pankratz Denver Post Staff Writer The Regional Transportation District, long at odds with various segments of Denver’s handicapped community is asking Denver District Judge Harold Reed to declare the Colorado Handicapped Act unconstitutional. At the time the state Legislature passed the act, it said it was doing so to “encourage and enable the blind, the visually handicapped, the deaf, the partially deaf, and the otherwise physically disabled to participate fully in the social and economic life of the state and to engage in remunerative employment.” But RTD in motions filed in recent weeks with Reed, has charged that the statue is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. RTD also says that those who violate the act are subject to a criminal penalty. In particular, RTD lawyers Alan E. Richman and Lawrence D. Stone take aim at a section the act which says the handicapped are “entitled to full and equal housing and full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of all common carriers, airplanes, motor vehicles, railroad trains, motor buses, streetcars, boats or any other public conveyances or modes of transportation…” Does that mean, ask the RTD lawyers, that “cab drivers are liable for criminal penalty for refusing to buy cabs which can transport persons in wheelchairs? What about persons in iron lungs or on other life support systems? Does this mean that a private automobile has to be wheelchair accessible?” The act, they contend, is sweeping in nature and poses an “impossible conundrum… to an organization or a person who wishes not to violate its provisions on pain of criminal sanctions.” Those who violate the act are guilty of a misdemeanor and are subject to a maximum sentence of a $100 fine and 60 days in county jail. In January 1982, seven wheelchair-bound individuals and the Atlantis Community for the disabled accused the district in a lawsuit filed in Denver District Court of violating both the Colorado Handicapped Act and a settlement reached in federal court several years ago. Basically they contended that in the federal settlement RTD agreed that all new buses would have wheelchair-lift equipment. Although many of the new buses are accessible to people in wheelchairs, they contend that RTD has decided against making 89 new buses, due for delivery in June, accessible to the handicapped. By denying such access, says the lawsuit, RTD has breached both the terms of the federal settlement and the duties it owes the handicapped under the Colorado