Rocky Mountain News Weds., May 23. 1990

(There are 2 articles here. The first article starts here on 567 and continues on 565, the whole story is included here for ease of reading. The second article comes after the first one.)

WORLD & NATION

News Editor 892-2634, John Davidson,
National Editor 892-2731
Clifford D. May, International Editor 892-2739

House OKs rights bill for disabled
Measure would ban discrimination

Scripps Howard News Service

WASHINGTON — The House yesterday passed legislation to outlaw discrimination against 43 million disabled Americans.

The 403-20 vote in favor of the bill, regarded as the most sweeping civil rights legislation in a quarter-century, sends it to conference with the Senate, which passed its version 76-8 last fall.

The measure is backed by President Bush, who campaigned on the Americans with Disabilities Act in the 1988 presidential race, when few voters had heard of the bill.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who shepherded the legislation through the House, hailed it as “the most significant civil rights legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

The 1964 law barred discrimination based on race, sex, religion, color or national origin in private employment, public accommodations and government service. The Americans with Disabilities Act would extend civil rights protections to the disabled as well.

Passage came despite opposition from business groups, which have complained about the potential for lawsuits along with the cost of adapting offices, plants and stores for disabled workers and customers.

Sponsors counter that keeping the disabled out of the economic mainstream costs $170 billion a year in government benefits; they say this bill has been changed to take account of business concerns:

Companies with 25 or more workers would have two years to comply with the employment provisions, with four years allotted firms with as few as 15 workers.

To ease the expense of making smaller stores, restaurants and other public accommodations accessible to the disabled, the House voted to give small businesses at least two years to conform and exempted firms with fewer than 10 workers for 30 months.


In Colorado

According to Randy Chapman, director of Legal Services for The Legal Center Serving People with Disabilities. the expected passage or the American Disabilities Act will affect the state in three key ways: protect people with mental disabilities, allow disabled people to collect attorneys fees when challenging discrimination and require private businesses to provide reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities.

A state law protecting people with mental disabilities is expected to take effect in about a year, but a federal law would take effect
immediately, he said.

Chapman said businessmen's fears that the law will cost them in litigation and renovations are somewhat unfounded. "Most (businesses) need little or no accommodations . . . and there was substantial litigation when a similar law (for employers receiving federal funds) was passed."

Michael Auberger, co-director of the Colorado-based Atlantis Community for disabled citizens, said, "The law will open up the job market, the retail market . . . it will make us a legitimate class that has protection under the law that we never had before."
—- Diane Goldie

Created on

Friday 12 July 2013

Posted on

Friday 3 July 2015

Tags

ADA, buses, civil rights, Colorado, mental disabilities, people with disabilities

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