From: Julie Dawson 
Subject: Equality of Opportunity -- HISTORY.TXT  (fwd)
But most members and spectators viewed it as undermining one of
the basic premises of the ADA: that all new buildings and
vehicles will be accessible, that society will not consciously
build obstacles to persons with disabilities.  Moreover, they
pointed out that the Lipinski amendment would mean that spaces
accessible for wheelchairs would be confined to one car,
providing a sort of  cattle car  effect.  The White House chose
not to take a stand on the issue.  The amendment failed
decisively, with 75 percent of members voting against it.
     The second transportation amendment came from Congressman
Shuster.  With the Rules Committee having supported the principle
of all new transit buses being lift-equipped, Shuster proposed an
alternative.  He suggested that the Secretary of Transportation
should be allowed to waive the requirements of accessible
vehicles for urban areas of less than 200,000, or in non-urban
areas, provided that the community designed an alternative based
on input from persons with disabilities.  Shuster was concerned
that the lift mandate would be implemented at the expense of
paratransit.  But Congressman Mineta s argument, that  local
option simply does not work as a national policy,  prevailed. 
Democrats tended to side with Mineta, and Republicans with
Shuster. But, overall, the disability community won with a
favorable margin: 64 percent of the House opposed the amendment.
     The final amendment taken up by the House was a revisit of
the Sensenbrenner amendment: restricting remedies to those
currently stated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The basic
argument on behalf of the amendment was that the potential to add
punitive damages through the Civil Rights Act of 1990 represented
a violation of the negotiated agreement with the White House. 
Congressman Bartlett, speaking in favor of the amendment, said it
 simply codifies  what the Education and Labor Committee reported
in principle.  Although representatives of the disability
community felt all along that the principle was parity,
representatives of the administration and many Republicans felt
that the compromise was a fixed reference to the Civil Rights
Act, and that they therefore had been double-crossed. 
Congressman Sensenbrenner also expressed the widespread fear that
the ADA would lead to excessive litigation and that the
availability of punitive damages would do nothing but encourage
adversarial law suits.  The Bush administration expressly
supported this amendment.
     You have lesser rights if you have lesser remedies. 
          Congresswoman Pat SchroederOpponents, however, thought
that this amendment, like the Chapman amendment, struck at the
very essence of the ADA.  The philosoph ical basis of the ADA was
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that persons with disabilities
should share the same civil rights protections as those possessed
by other disadvantaged groups.  To provide persons with
disabilities with a different standard of remedies was
discriminatory, they said. Congressman Dan Glickman (D-KS)
conceded that there might be legitimate reasons for excluding
punitive damages from civil rights laws, but said it was  unfair
to lock the disabled into a lesser set of remedies.   As
Congresswoman Schroeder said:  you have lesser rights if you have
lesser remedies.   Congressman Bruce A. Morrison (D-CT) argued
that it was an  abomination  to  plant the seeds of . . .
discriminatory treatment before the courts, discriminatory
treatment before the law,  in a bill expressly designed to
prohibit discrimination. 
     The voting results for this amendment were the most strictly
partisan of all the amendments. Overall, the House rejected the
amendment by a narrow margin of 54 percent.  Democrats, however,
opposed the amendment with an 81 percent majority, while
Republicans supported the amendment with an 86 percent majority. 
After the vote on the Sensenbrenner amendment, the House
Committee on the Whole reported the bill back to the full House
for a final vote.  Although no member requested a second vote on
any of the amendments, Congressman Tom DeLay (R-TX) exercised his
right to offer a motion to recommit the bill back to the Rules
Committee for consideration.  He proposed the committee consider
two further amendments: one giving employers more latitude in
evaluating drug and alcohol history in employment decisions, and
another applying the entirety of the ADA to the executive and
judicial branches.  But the House rejected the motion with a 66
percent majority.  As with the other votes, this decision split
largely on party lines: 96 percent of Democrats opposed the
amendment; 78 percent of Republicans supported it.  After the
DeLay motion was defeated, the House turned immediately to a
recorded vote on the ADA.  Both parties passed the bill
overwhelmingly.  Of the 423 members voting, 403 (95 percent)
supported the ADA.  The ADA was now destined for passage, but
still more challenges lay ahead.

  6
                        Enshrining the ADA:
              House-Senate Conference and the Signing
The Chapman amendment posed a major negotiation challenge,
causing some advocates to feel, for the first time, that the ADA
might unravel altogether.On May 22, 1990, it seemed as if the
battle to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act was won.  Both
the Senate and the House approved the bill with upwards of 90
percent majorities.  Moreover, rumors that President George Bush
might veto the bill because of the remedies conflict proved
false.  Although Bush hoped to prevent the incorporation of
punitive damages by amending the Civil Rights Act of 1990, he
continued to endorse the ADA and pledged to sign it.  However,
the House and Senate had passed two different bills, and the
Chapman amendment posed a major negotiation chal lenge. 
Throughout the deliberations of the 1989 ADA, most disability
advocates had re mained at least somewhat optimistic that the
bill would pass, albeit only after surmounting significant
obstacles.  But the circumstances of the conference proceedings
caused some advocates to feel, for the first time, that the ADA
might unravel altogether.
             Conference Proceedings and Final Passage
     On May 24, 1990, just two days after the House passed the
ADA, the House requested a conference with the Senate to resolve
all points of disagreement.  The Speaker appointed 22 conferees
representing each of the committees and key participants in the
ADA s passage.  Two weeks later, on June 6, the Senate met to
consider the House s substitute amendment for the Senate bill, S.
933.  Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) asked for unanimous consent that
the Senate object to the House version of the ADA, rather than
approve it, and request a conference to settle differences.
     Persons with disabilities ought to be judged on the basis of
their abilities; they should not be judged nor discriminated
against based on unfounded fear, prejudice, ignorance, or
mythologies. 
          Senator Tom Harkin  Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC),
however, introduced a motion to instruct the Senate conferees to
support the Chapman amendment passed in the House.  Reminiscent
of the House floor debate, Senator Helms argued that the reason
the Chapman amendment was necessary was that it repre sented  a
matter of staying in business.   Although Helms acknowledged that
there was currently no known evidence that AIDS could be transmit
ted through food or drink or casual contact, he said the
livelihood of restaurants was dependent largely on  public
perception.  If, said Helms,  the public is led to perceive that
there will be a health risk to those coming into the restaurant
and eating the food, rightly or wrongly, that business could be
destroyed.   Helms cited examples of restaurants that closed
because people found out their employees had AIDS.  He also
listed many organizations that supported the amendment, chief
among them the National Restaurant Association (NRA).  The
National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), in order to
apply pressure on representatives, staked the claim that the
amend ment was  a key small business vote.   Moreover, Helms
argued that the Chapman amendment struck  a sensitive balance  by
requiring that employers transfer persons with AIDS to comparable
jobs of equal pay.  
     Senator Harkin disagreed.  The amendment  strikes right to
the heart and soul of the Americans with Disabilities Act,  he
said.  It violated the act s central thesis:  that persons with
disabilities ought to be judged on the basis of their abilities;
they should not be judged nor discriminated against based on
unfounded fear, prejudice, ignorance, or mythologies.   The
Chapman amendment, said Harkin, was asking Congress  to codify
fear.   Harkin noted that Secretary of Health and Human Services
(HHS) Louis Sullivan wrote a letter to House Speaker Thomas S.
Foley (D-WA) saying that policy based on misconceptions about,
and fear of, HIV would  only complicate and confuse disease
control efforts without adding any protection to the public
health.   William Roper, who had left the White House to become
Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), wrote that
there was no reason for a person with HIV or AIDS to be
prohibited from handling food, unless he or she had another
infection for which any worker would be restricted from food
service.  Harkin requested that these and two dozen other letters
opposing the amendment be printed in the Congressional Record. 
Many senators joined Harkin in opposing the Chapman amendment as
well. 
     Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-ME) attempted to
counter Senator Helms by introducing a motion to table, and
thereby suspend, Helms s motion.  Mitchell s motion came to an
immediate vote, but only 40 senators supported it.  Democrats
counted for 33 of the affirmative votes, but more than a third of
the Democrats joined Republicans to oppose the motion.  Since the
vote on Mitchell s motion illustrated Senate opinion on the
Chapman amendment, the Senate then agreed to Helms s motion by a
voice vote and appointed conferees.
     House and Senate conferees and their staffs reviewed 81
points of dispute.  Throughout the House deliberations, Robert
Silverstein and others from the Senate side had worked closely
with House members and staff to ensure that the Senate agreed
with the changes the House made. Consequently, House and Senate
staff were able to develop prompt agreements on 79 of the 81
disputed issues.  In each case (and with amendments in a few
cases), the Senate conferees con ceded the House position. 
     Although staff swiftly resolved most differences, Robert
Silverstein described the time between House passage and final
approval of the ADA as  the month from hell. Although staff
swiftly resolved most differences, Silverstein described the time
be tween House passage and final approval of the ADA as  the
month from hell.    This was because staff and members were at a
complete impasse on two issues: the Chapman amend ment and
congressional coverage by the ADA. Although House and Senate
sponsors hoped to get the ADA to the president s desk before July
4, the conflicts could not be resolved that quickly.
     House and Senate conferees met on June 25, 1990, with
Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) presiding.  Congressman Hoyer
was the leading conferee and key negotiator for the House;
Senator Harkin joined Senator Kennedy as the leading conferees
for the Senate.  Congres sional coverage was the easier of the
two disputed areas, for which there were two separate issues. The
first concerned who had the power to enforce the application of
the ADA to Congress.  The original Senate provision had been
introduced late in the floor debate on September 7, 1989, as a
single sentence of intent, rather than a detailed proposal. 
Largely at the insistence of Congressman Hoyer, the House had
endorsed the Senate s proposal.  The House had also clarified the
section by specifying that administrative authority would be
exercised by the House of Representatives.  At the Conference,
however, Senate conferees bristled at the thought of  the other 
chamber having executive power over the Senate.  Conferees thus
agreed to have the Senate be responsible for exercising
administrative authority over itself.  The second point of
discussion was whether individuals alleging discrimination by
either the House or Senate would have a private right to
action the ability to sue a senator or representative in district
court.  Conferees decided that persons with disabilities should
have the same remedial options available with respect to Congress
as they did with other entities covered by the ADA.  The
conference thus upheld private right to action.
     Debate over the Chapman amendment was much more contentious,
and conferees devoted hours to discussing it.  The arguments for
and against the amendment, by this time, were clear. The
difficulty for the conferees was that, on one hand, a majority of
members in the House voted for the amendment.  And in the Senate,
a majority of senators indirectly voiced their support for the
amendment.  Going against the majority opinion of both Houses
might endanger the bill.  On the other hand, inclusion of the
Chapman amendment threatened to kill the bill. The disability
community took a firm and united stand that they would withdraw
their support from the bill if the amendment stayed in.  There
simply could not be a viable ADA if the disability community,
which the law was designed to assist, opposed it.  Moreover, the
disability community s chief congressio nal supporters stood with
the disability community. 
     Senate and House conferees, independently, had to approve
decisions for each area of dispute.  As it became increasingly
clear that the Chapman amendment not only contradicted basic
premises of the ADA but also might mean the end of the ADA, some
conferees opted to save the bill by rejecting the Chapman
amendment, in spite of their sympathy to it.  For House
conferees, it was a close vote.  Among the 22 House conferees,
opponents of the amendment won by only two votes, 12 to 10. 
Senate conferees also voted to reject the Chapman amendment.
     On the following day, June 26, the conferees prepared and
presented a conference report that listed each point of
disagreement and how it had been resolved.  It might seem that
the ADA was finally secure now that delegations from the House
and the Senate agreed, in entirety, about a version of the ADA. 
But conferees had taken the bold action of ruling against their
colleagues and the conference report still had to be passed by
both chambers.
     As it became increasingly clear that the Chapman amendment
not only contradicted basic premises of the ADA but also might
mean the end of the ADA, some conferees opted to save the bill by
rejecting the amendment.Although the general public remained
---
---------------