ADA Amendments Act of 2008

ADA AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - September 17, 2008)

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Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, in 1990, a bipartisan Congress took significant steps to break down the physical and societal barriers that for far too long kept disabled Americans from fully participating in the American Dream. Today, the House takes the final step towards righting the wrongs that courts have made in their interpretation of this landmark law.

[Time: 11:30]

It has been a long road to finally reach this point.

As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee last Congress, I first introduced this bill with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Although the Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the bill in 2006, it was too late in the legislative session to move it but that bill marked our intent and promise to tackle the issue in the 110th Congress.

Last year on the ADA's anniversary, Leader Hoyer and I introduced the bill again. The purpose of this legislation is to resolve the intent of Congress to cover a broad group of individuals with disabilities under the ADA and to eliminate the problem of courts focusing too heavily on whether individuals are covered by the law rather than on whether discrimination occurred. We worked with advocates from the disability community and business interests over the past year to craft a balanced bill with bipartisan support.

President Ronald Reagan once said, ``There is no limit to what you want to accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit.'' That statement rings true about negotiations with this bill. Interest groups that did not see eye-to-eye at the outset worked diligently over many months. After intense discussions, they came to a compromise that both sides could support.

The bill we pass today will restore the full meaning of equal protection under the law and all of the promises that our Nation has to offer. As Members are well aware by now, the Supreme Court has slowly chipped away at the broad protections of the ADA and has created a new set of barriers for disabled Americans. The Court's rulings currently exclude millions of disabled Americans from the ADA's protection--the very citizens that Congress expressly sought to include within the scope of the Act in 1990.

The impact of these decisions is such that disabled Americans can be discriminated against by their employer because of their conditions but are not considered disabled enough by our Federal courts to invoke the protections of the ADA. This is unacceptable. Today's vote will enable disabled Americans utilizing the ADA to focus on the discrimination that they have experienced rather than having to first prove that they fall within the scope of the ADA's protection.

Finally, I would like to pay tribute to my wife, Cheryl. As the chairman of the board of the American Association of People With Disabilities, she has been dogged in her advocacy of this legislation and has presented real life situations on why this bill ought to pass. Without her efforts, a lot of the progress that has been made would not have occurred, and I salute her for that.

The ADA has been one of the most effective civil rights laws passed by Congress. I encourage my colleagues to vote in favor of the ADA Amendments Act.

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