From: Julie Dawson 
Subject: Equality of Opportunity -- HISTORY.TXT  (fwd)
item of Congress in 1988), through the Senate and House of
Representatives, and to the desk of President George Bush in
1990. 
     To understand the ADA one must first understand the decades
that preceded it.  Equality of Opportunity therefore pays
considerable attention to the tradition of civil rights
established in the 1960s and developments within the disability
community during the 1970s and 1980s.  Especially important for
the ADA s success was the emergence of a disability rights
movement molded in the image of the movements that preceded
it the civil rights, women s, self-help, and the deinstitut
ionalization and normalization movements.  The disability rights
movement deserves its own book; the following pages seek only to
relate its relevance to the ADA s development. 
     The extraordinary efforts of people with disabilities
throughout the nation helped build a grass roots movement that
resulted in legislative and judicial successes and the
development of crucial coalitions and networks within the civil
rights community, Congress, and the White House. The ADA could
not have succeeded without this foundation.  Equally important
was the ADA s legislative foundation in the Civil Rights Act of
1964 and regulatory foundation resulting from the Rehabilitation
Act of 1973.  By building on tested legal principles, the ADA was
able to avert much of the debate that would have accompanied an
act developed de novo.  This is not to say there was no conflict
over the ADA.  On the contrary, the ADA went through
comprehensive review by various interested parties and underwent
painstaking revisions.  The original draft, for example, was
transformed to enlist broad, bipartisan support.  But the Civil
Rights Act and the Rehabilitation Act enabled the ADA to
withstand Congressional scrutiny.
Some Lessons
     The passage of the ADA was a consciousness-changing
experience for the 101st Congress and must remain an important
analytic point of departure for the development of disability
policy both now and in the future.  This account therefore has as
much to say about our public policy future as it does about our
past.  
     In our age of cynicism about the American political system,
the ADA offers a refreshing example of how the legislative
process can work when it works well.Students of public policy and
the American legislative process would do well to examine how the
ADA came about.  In our age of cynicism about the American
political system, where partisan clashes have led to government
shut-downs and rampant accusations, the ADA offers a refreshing
example of how the legislative process can work when it works
well.  Passage of the ADA is a story of political leaders on both
sides of the aisle who put aside personal and partisan
differences to do what they thought was the right thing to do. 
The ADA was certainly not without its detractors, and debate was
at times prolonged and intense.  Moreover, near unanimous support
in the final voting masks deep divisions that characterized the
deliberative process. But members of Congress and the Bush
administration demonstrated a remarkable cooperative spirit that
resulted in a solid, durable act that has been able to withstand
subsequent scrutiny.  Furthermore, they maintained a high level
of public debate that kept the ADA from falling victim to a
venomous public debate controlled by spin doctors and political
pundits as witnessed, for example, in the Civil Rights Act of
1991.  In short, the passage of the ADA provides important
lessons about restoring dignity to public debate about the
leading issues of our time.
     Also important for the enactment of the ADA was the ability
of the ADA coalition to close ranks.  Historically, the
disability community has been divided internally, in part because
of conflicts over limited public funding.  With the ADA, however,
scores of organizations representing thousands of people with
different disabilities joined forces to work for a common cause. 
People with blindness fought the battles of those who used
wheelchairs; persons with epilepsy fought the battles of those
with deafness.  The disability community s abiding commitment to
act as one unified voice helped keep the ADA a strong act and
prevented the exclusion of specific subgroups of disabilities. 
In Closing
     The disability community s abiding commitment to act as one
unified voice helped keep the ADA a strong act and prevented
exclusion of specific subgroups of disabilities.Now is the time
to preserve a record about the creation and passage of this
historic, landmark legisla tion.  We view the present and look to
the future based on our cumulative experiences.  As we look
toward the continued development of disability policy, we must
have a firm grasp on how we have reached this point. This is
especially important for those who were not direct participants
in the ADA s passage and for the next generation that is growing
up in an America transformed by the ADA.  Because disability is
usually not passed on from generation to generation, there is not
a natural cultural transference about disability.  NCD recognizes
the crucial role of the past and the need to build our own
history as we march into the future.  Therefore, we made a
commitment to providing a thorough analysis of the ADA s history. 
Other histories will and must be written, but this one sets the
stage.
     The National Council on Disability and the National
Rehabilitation Hospital Research Center are pleased to make
Equality of Opportunity, by Jonathan M. Young, available to the
public. We believe it is a work in which the disability community
and the public policy-making community can take great pride.
     Marca Bristo   Gerben DeJong
     Chairperson,   Director,
     National Council on DisabilityNRH Research Center

                        Executive Summary
Laying the Foundation:
Disability Policy & Activism, 1968-1988
     In retrospect, it seems as if the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) passed Congress easily.  But most people
aware of the proposal in 1987 thought success, at that time, was
doubtful. The fact that the ADA did reach President Bush s desk
and was signed into law is a tribute to the groundwork that had
been laid in the previous two decades.  A string of legal
precedents expanded upon the foundation of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.  A nationwide
disability rights movement emerged from within the disability
community.  Attorneys in the disability community attained a high
degree of legal sophistication.  Disability organizations
successfully united with the civil rights community to promote
disability policy as a civil rights issue.  The disability
community established extensive networks among its
constituencies, Congress, and the White House.  Numerous
effective and talented leaders emerged from within the disability
community to help guide the ADA through Congress.  Without these
developments, the ADA likely would have failed.
Putting the ADA on the Legislative Agenda:
The National Council on Disability
     Successful passage of a law depends first on getting a
proposal to Congress as a viable policy option.  For the ADA,
this role as facilitator was performed by the National Council on
the Handicapped (now National Council on Disability, [NCD]).  In
1984, Congress issued NCD a mandate to review all federal
programs relating to disability and offer recommendations on how
Congress could best promote the independence of persons with
disabilities and minimize depend ence on governmental programs. 
NCD s primary recommendation to Congress was a call for passage
of a comprehensive, equal opportunity law for persons with
disabilities.  Subsequently, NCD decided to take action by
drafting its own legislative proposal for congressional
consideration. NCD successfully solicited Senator Lowell P.
Weicker, Jr. (R-CT) and Congressman Tony Coelho (D-CA) to sponsor
the ADA and introduce the bill to Congress.  After incorporating
recommenda tions offered by representatives from the disability
community at large, Weicker and Coelho introduced the ADA to the
Senate and House on April 28 and April 29, 1988.
Publicizing the ADA:
Advocacy and the Government Response
     ADA advocates introduced their proposal in 1988 not with the
expectation of passing the bill that year, but as an opportunity
to create momentum by empowering people throughout the nation to
advocate for the bill.  They planned to use the politics of an
election year as a way to publicize the ADA and gain a foothold
as a top priority for the next session of Congress.  During this
year, representatives from the disability community began to form
an ADA coalition to promote passage of the ADA. This coalition
worked with members of Congress to solicit cosponsors and
encouraged the presidential candidates to endorse the bill.  It
also effectively used this time to begin mobilizing nationwide
grassroots advocacy for the ADA to demonstrate that people
throughout the country (not just a few persons from a think tank)
demanded its passage.   Powerful testimony from persons with
disabilities helped document the desperate need for legislation
such as the ADA.  As a consequence, ADA advocates successfully
positioned the ADA for serious introduction in 1989.
Creating a Workable ADA:
The Senate and the White House
     George Bush, who advocated for the rights of disabled
persons in his campaign, was elected president in 1988 and
subsequently promoted passage of the ADA.  At the same time,
however, Lowell Weicker lost his bid for reelection to the
Senate.  In Weicker s absence, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) became
the Senate ADA sponsor.  In conjunction with Senator Edward M.
Kennedy (D-MA) and with the participation of a variety of
constituencies, Harkin rewrote the ADA in a form that stood a
reasonable chance at passage.  On May 9, 1989, Harkin and
Congressman Coelho simultaneously introduced the ADA to both
houses of Congress.  Coelho, Kennedy and Harkin decided to begin
deliberations in the Senate.  After hearings held in May and
June, 1989, the Senate entered a series of negotiations sessions
with the Bush administration to craft a bipartisan, compro mise
bill.  On August 2, the Senate Committee on Labor and Human
Resources voted unanimously to report the ADA, as amended, to the
Senate floor.  The Senate passed the ADA by a vote of 76 to 8 on
September 7, 1989.
Fashioning a Durable ADA:
The House of Representatives
     Under the leadership of Congressman Coelho and, later,
Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD), the House began its
deliberations by using the bill approved by the Senate.  The
House process was more complicated than the Senate s, in part
because the bill went to four committees and six subcommittees. 
In contrast to the rapid action in the Senate, the House took
nearly nine additional months to analyze and refine the bill. 
The dynamic was also much different because business
organizations, who had deep concerns about the cost burden and
the litigation potential of the ADA, lobbied vigorously by
applying constituent pressure on members.  The disability
community now worked to hold the ground it had achieved in the
Senate.  The main issue in the House was the effect of the ADA on
businesses and governments covered by the ADA s provisions; many
changes were made to make the ADA more acceptable to entities
covered by the ADA.  A series of  weakening  amendments were
proposed and defeated at the committee level and on the House
floor, where the House passed the ADA by a vote of 403 to 20, on
May 22, 1990.  One controversial amendment, however, did succeed. 
The Chapman amendment said that employers could legally remove
persons with contagious diseases, such as AIDS, from food
handling positions, even where there was no evidence that the
disease could be transmitted.
Enshrining the ADA:
House-Senate Conference and the Signing
     The overwhelming votes in favor of the ADA in both the House
and the Senate seemingly destined the ADA for success.  But the
Chapman amendment passed in the House threatened to kill the
bill: the disability community and its congressional sponsors
decided not to support an ADA with the amendment.  The conflict
over food handling and contagious diseases had to be settled by a
conference between the House and Senate, where conferees rejected
the Chapman amendment, only to have members in both the House and
Senate try to put it back into the ADA.  After nearly two months
of wrangling over the provision, the Senate developed a
compromise through the leadership of Senator Orrin G. Hatch
(R-UT).  The House and Senate then passed the ADA in final form
on July 12 and 13, 1990.  On July 26, before about 3,000 persons,
President Bush signed the ADA into law as Public Law 101-336.
Epilogue
     The ADA is unique in the context of civil rights legislation
because it requires that businesses and governments do more than
just cease discriminatory actions.  They must also take proactive
steps to offer equal opportunity to persons with disabilities,
commensurate with their economic resources.  The ADA is
distinctive in the context of disability legislation not for its
individual provisions, most of which were already established in
some form by various state and local governments, but in its
comprehensive nature and application to much of the private
sector. No single factor can explain the ADA s success.  A whole
host of circumstances worked in its favor: effective leadership;
advocates in key government positions; the rightness of the
cause; the mobilization of the grassroots disability community; a
string of legislative successes offering momentum; legal and
lobbying expertise in the disability community; the willingness
of persons with disabilities to unite for a common cause; the
cautious support of the business community; and ideological
justifications from both the right and the left.  The time was
right and the cause was just.

               Equality of Opportunity
                              The Nation s proper goals regarding
individuals with disabilitiesare to assure equality of
opportunity, full participation, 
                              independent living, and economic
self-sufficiency. 
                              The Americans with Disabilities Act

                                   Views From Congress and the
White House
                  Disability Discrimination
Authorities on disability have often said, and I have quoted them
on this floor before, that the history of society s formal
methods of dealing with people with disabilities can be summed up
in two words: segregation and inequality.
               Senator Lowell P. Weicker, Jr.
                      Disability Rights
We know that there is going to have to be accommodations to give
us our basic civil rights. We know that.  We understand that. 
---
---------------