Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

Based on Wikipedia: Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

In the summer of 1990, something remarkable happened in American politics: a sweeping civil rights bill passed with broad bipartisan support and was signed into law by a Republican president. The Americans with Disabilities Act transformed how America thinks about disability, access, and what it means to participate fully in society. Today, when you see a wheelchair ramp at a store entrance, closed captions on a television, or a reserved parking spot near a building's front door, you're seeing the ADA at work.

But here's what makes this law fascinating: it didn't just prohibit discrimination. It went further than any previous civil rights legislation by requiring businesses and governments to actively change their environments and practices to accommodate people with disabilities. This was something new.

The Problem the Law Was Designed to Solve

Before 1990, America wasn't built for people with disabilities. Think about that literally. Stairs without ramps. Doors too narrow for wheelchairs. Bathrooms impossible to navigate. Telephones that couldn't be used by people who were deaf. Employment applications that required handwriting from people who couldn't hold a pen.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had made it illegal to discriminate based on race, religion, sex, and national origin. But disability was different. Even well-meaning employers and business owners could effectively exclude people with disabilities simply by maintaining the status quo—by keeping buildings, processes, and expectations designed exclusively for able-bodied people.

The ADA changed this by introducing a revolutionary concept: reasonable accommodation. Employers and public spaces wouldn't just have to stop actively discriminating. They would have to take positive steps to make participation possible.

What Actually Counts as a Disability?

This is where things get interesting, and it's at the heart of contemporary debates about the law. The ADA covers both mental and physical conditions, and here's the crucial part: a condition doesn't need to be severe or permanent to qualify as a disability.

The law provides a list of conditions that essentially qualify automatically: amputation, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (commonly known as ADHD), autism, bipolar disorder, blindness, cancer, cerebral palsy, deafness, diabetes, epilepsy, HIV and AIDS, intellectual disability, major depressive disorder, mobility impairments requiring a wheelchair, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and schizophrenia.

But here's the nuance. Other conditions can also qualify as disabilities depending on a specific test: what would the person's symptoms be if they weren't using medication, therapy, assistive devices, or other treatments? This is called the "mitigating measures" test, and it's designed to prevent a strange paradox. Imagine someone with severe depression that's well-controlled by medication. Without the mitigating measures analysis, they might be told they're not disabled enough to qualify for protection—precisely because their treatment works.

For conditions that come and go, like multiple sclerosis or certain mental health conditions, the law looks at what happens during an "active episode." A person isn't disqualified from protection just because they have good periods.

What the Law Explicitly Excludes

The drafters of the ADA anticipated that some people might try to claim disability status for conditions that society has strong reasons not to accommodate. The law explicitly excludes kleptomania (compulsive stealing), pedophilia, exhibitionism, and voyeurism. These exclusions exist because protecting such conditions would effectively require society to tolerate harmful or illegal behavior.

Sexual orientation is also excluded, but for a different reason. When the law was written, homosexuality had only recently been removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The exclusion was meant to clarify that sexual orientation is not a disability—not to deny protection, but to affirm that being gay or lesbian is not a medical condition requiring accommodation.

An interesting development came in 2022 when a federal appeals court ruled that gender dysphoria—the distress some transgender people experience when their gender identity doesn't match their assigned sex at birth—can qualify as a disability under the ADA. This opened a potential new avenue for legal protection for transgender individuals, though the law in this area continues to evolve.

Employment: Where Most People Encounter the ADA

If you've ever applied for a job or worked for a company with more than fifteen employees, the ADA has shaped your experience in ways you might not realize.

Employers covered by the law cannot ask about disabilities during job interviews. They cannot require medical examinations before making a job offer. They cannot refuse to hire someone because of a disability, real or perceived. They cannot segregate employees with disabilities or subject them to harassment.

But the most distinctive requirement is reasonable accommodation. This means employers must make changes to help employees with disabilities perform their jobs. What kinds of changes? The law provides examples: special equipment, modified schedules, changes to how work is assigned or communicated. A software developer who is blind might receive screen-reading software. An employee with chronic fatigue syndrome might get a flexible start time. Someone with autism might receive written instructions rather than verbal ones.

There's an important limit, though. Accommodations must be reasonable. An employer doesn't have to provide an accommodation that would cause "undue hardship"—excessive difficulty or expense. What counts as undue hardship depends on the employer's size and resources. A Fortune 500 company can afford accommodations that would bankrupt a small business.

And here's something people often misunderstand: receiving an accommodation doesn't excuse an employee from doing their job. The person must still be able to perform the "essential functions" of the position and meet normal performance standards. The accommodation removes barriers; it doesn't lower expectations.

A Constitutional Wrinkle: States and Sovereign Immunity

In 2001, the Supreme Court decided a case called Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama versus Garrett. The ruling created an odd gap in the law's coverage.

The Constitution's Eleventh Amendment gives states "sovereign immunity"—protection from being sued by individuals. The Supreme Court ruled that this immunity prevents state employees from suing their state employers for violating the ADA's employment provisions.

This doesn't mean states can discriminate freely. State employees can still file complaints with the Department of Justice or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and these federal agencies can sue states on behalf of employees. But the employee cannot walk into court and sue the state directly. It's a procedural hurdle, not a complete shield, but it matters.

Public Services and Transportation

The ADA goes beyond employment. It requires all public entities—cities, counties, school districts, state agencies—to make their programs and services accessible to people with disabilities.

This has two dimensions. Physical access means that buildings, facilities, and infrastructure must meet accessibility standards. But there's also programmatic access. A city can't have policies or procedures that effectively exclude people with disabilities, even if the buildings themselves are accessible.

Public transportation has specific requirements. Every bus, train, and subway system operated by a public entity must be accessible. This includes Amtrak and local commuter rail. Buses must have wheelchair lifts or ramps. Trains must have accessible cars.

And for people who cannot use fixed-route public transit—perhaps because they can't get to a bus stop or can't wait outside—the law requires paratransit services. These are typically door-to-door van services that must be provided as an alternative to regular buses and trains.

Private Businesses: Public Accommodations

When you walk into a restaurant, hotel, store, movie theater, or doctor's office, you're entering what the law calls a "place of public accommodation." These private businesses have their own obligations under the ADA.

For any new construction or major renovation after 1992, the rules are strict. The building must comply with detailed accessibility guidelines covering everything from doorway widths to bathroom layouts to parking space dimensions.

But what about older buildings that haven't been renovated? They're not off the hook entirely. The law requires these businesses to remove architectural barriers where doing so is "readily achievable"—meaning it can be "easily accomplished without much difficulty or expense."

This is deliberately flexible. What's readily achievable for a national retail chain is different from what's readily achievable for a family-owned restaurant. The law calls for a balancing test, weighing the cost of the modification against the financial resources of the business.

Some entities get exemptions. Private clubs—think country clubs and fraternal organizations—generally don't have to comply with public accommodation rules. Neither do religious organizations. Historic properties have special provisions too: they must comply to the "maximum extent feasible," but can use alternative standards if following the normal rules would destroy historically significant features.

Swimming Pools: A Case Study in Implementation

The way the law handles swimming pools illustrates how detailed these regulations can get. Under rules updated in 2010, newly constructed pools must have accessible means of entry and exit—typically a pool lift, sloped entry, or transfer wall.

But existing pools? They must provide accessible entry only if it's "readily achievable." A hotel chain might be required to install pool lifts at hundreds of locations. A small motel might not. The regulations even distinguish between large pools (which need multiple accessible entry points) and small pools (which might need only one).

This granularity is typical of how the ADA works in practice. The broad principle—access for people with disabilities—gets translated into thousands of specific requirements, standards, and judgment calls.

Service Animals: The Dog in the Room

Few aspects of the ADA generate as much public confusion, controversy, and occasional fraud as service animal rules.

The law is actually quite specific. A service animal is a dog (or in some cases, a miniature horse) trained to perform tasks for a person with a disability. A guide dog that helps a blind person navigate. A dog that alerts a deaf person to sounds. A dog trained to detect and respond to seizures. A psychiatric service dog that interrupts self-harming behavior.

Businesses can ask only two questions: Is this a service animal required because of a disability? What task is the dog trained to perform?

That's it. They cannot ask for documentation. They cannot ask the dog to demonstrate its task. They cannot ask about the nature of the person's disability. They cannot require special identification or registration for the animal.

A service animal can only be excluded if it's out of control and the handler cannot regain control, or if the animal is not housebroken. Notably, another customer's allergies or fear of dogs is not a valid reason to exclude a service animal.

This creates obvious potential for abuse. Since businesses can't demand proof, some people have claimed untrained pets as service animals to bring them into restaurants, stores, and airplanes. The tension between protecting legitimate service animal users and preventing fraud has spawned a cottage industry of fake service animal vests and certificates—which have no legal validity—and growing skepticism toward all service animal claims.

In 2010, the regulations were updated to allow miniature horses as service animals in some circumstances. This isn't whimsy. Miniature horses can be trained to perform guide work similar to dogs, live longer than dogs, and are a viable option for people whose religious beliefs prohibit contact with dogs.

Communication Access: From Interpreters to Captions

The ADA requires businesses and public entities to provide "auxiliary aids and services" so people with disabilities can access information and communication. This requirement has driven massive changes in how America communicates.

For people who are deaf or hard of hearing, this might mean sign language interpreters, real-time captioning, written notes, or video relay services. For people who are blind or have low vision, it might mean Braille materials, audio recordings, screen readers, or large print documents.

The law uses a flexible standard: businesses must provide effective communication unless doing so would "fundamentally alter" their services or create an "undue burden." But they must try.

Television captioning, while technically driven by separate legislation, grew directly from the ADA's framework. The Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 required that all televisions over thirteen inches sold after July 1993 include caption-decoding capability. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 went further, requiring captioning of most television programming.

The ADA also created the telecommunications relay system. Before 1990, a deaf person essentially couldn't make a phone call. Title IV of the ADA required telephone companies to provide relay services—operators who type out spoken words for deaf callers and voice written messages for hearing recipients. Today, video relay services let deaf callers communicate in sign language through an interpreter.

The Politics of How It Passed

It's worth pausing on the remarkable political coalition that passed this law. George H.W. Bush, a Republican president, signed it. The bill had broad bipartisan support in both houses of Congress.

The opposition came from two directions. Business groups argued the law would impose costly mandates. Conservative evangelical organizations opposed protections for people with HIV and AIDS, viewing the disease through a moral lens.

The law passed anyway, in part because disability cuts across political lines in a way that other identities don't. Everyone knows someone with a disability. Everyone worries they might become disabled themselves. The disability rights movement successfully framed the ADA as completing the work of civil rights—extending the American promise of equal opportunity to a group that had been systematically excluded.

The Law Continues to Evolve

In 2008, Congress passed the ADA Amendments Act, signed by President George W. Bush, which took effect in January 2009. These amendments were a response to court decisions that had narrowed the definition of disability, making it harder for people to qualify for protection.

The amendments pushed back, clarifying that the definition should be interpreted broadly. They made it easier for conditions managed by medication or other treatments to still qualify as disabilities. They emphasized that the law's focus should be on whether discrimination occurred, not on detailed analysis of whether someone is disabled enough to deserve protection.

Courts continue to interpret and apply the law in new contexts. Digital accessibility—whether websites and apps must be accessible to people with disabilities—remains an active area of litigation. The COVID-19 pandemic raised new questions about masking requirements and people with respiratory conditions or autism who struggle with masks.

What the ADA Really Changed

More than three decades after its passage, the Americans with Disabilities Act has fundamentally altered the American landscape—literally. Curb cuts at intersections, originally designed for wheelchair users, are now used by everyone with strollers, luggage, or delivery carts. Automatic doors help anyone with full hands. Captions, designed for deaf viewers, are now used in noisy gyms and quiet offices.

This phenomenon has a name: the curb-cut effect. Features designed for people with disabilities often end up benefiting everyone.

But the law has also generated controversy. Some critics argue it has medicalized ordinary human variation, encouraging people to seek disability labels for characteristics that previous generations simply lived with. The dramatic increase in students receiving testing accommodations—the subject of the Atlantic article this essay accompanies—reflects this tension.

Is a student with ADHD who receives extra time on exams benefiting from a law working as intended? Or has the definition of disability expanded so far that it now encompasses ordinary differences in ability and processing speed? The ADA itself doesn't answer this question. It provides a framework—disability as a civil rights issue, accommodation as a legal requirement—but the boundaries of that framework remain contested.

What's not contested is the law's impact. Before the ADA, a wheelchair user couldn't enter most buildings in America. A deaf person couldn't make a phone call. A blind person couldn't access most written information. These barriers were accepted as natural, even inevitable.

The ADA rejected that acceptance. It declared that barriers to participation aren't natural—they're choices. Buildings are designed by people who chose not to include ramps. Phones were designed by people who chose not to accommodate deaf users. Information was presented in ways that chose to exclude blind readers.

And if those barriers are choices, they can be chosen differently.

That insight—that disability is as much about how society is organized as it is about individual medical conditions—is perhaps the ADA's most lasting contribution. Whether one thinks society has applied this insight too broadly or not broadly enough, the fundamental reframe is here to stay.