Georgetown Law Library Guides U. Search this Guide Search. A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States This guide offers a history of various movements by citizens in the United States to gain political and social freedom and equality. It highlights resources available through the library and also offers a list of current civil rights organizations. Texas Proposition 8 Obergefell v. Notable Supreme Court Cases: Sutton et al.
United Airlines, Inc. Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. The decision in Consolidated Rail Corporation v.
Darrone marked a significant victory for the disability rights community. The court found that employment discrimination was in fact prohibited by Section , but equally importantly the Court found that the regulations issued in by HEW were entitled to great deference by the courts. In , the Court was presented with the issue of whether people with contagious diseases are covered by Section The disability rights community worked closely with the lawyers representing the woman with tuberculous as well as filing numerous amicus briefs in the Supreme Court.
Arline, U. Working on the Arline case also provided a critical opportunity for lawyers in the disability rights community and lawyers in the AIDS community to work closely together and form alliances that would carry through and prove to be critical in the battle to secure passage of the ADA.
These legislative victories further advanced the reputation of the disability community and its advocates in Congress. The respect for the legal, organizing, and negotiations skills gained during these legislative efforts formed the basis of the working relationships with members of Congress and officials of the Administration, that proved indispensable in passing the ADA.
Whether by friend or foe, the disability community was taken seriously — it had become a political force to be contended with in Congress, in the voting booth, and in the media. The ADA, as we know it today, went through numerous drafts, revisions, negotiations, and amendments since the first version was introduced in Spurred by a draft bill prepared by the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency whose members were appointed by President Reagan, Senator Weicker and Representative Coelho introduced the first version of the ADA in April in the th Congress.
The disability community began to educate people with disabilities about the ADA and to gather evidence to support the need for broad anti-discrimination protections. The diaries served not only as testimonials of discrimination, but also to raise consciousness about the barriers to daily living which were simply tolerated as a part of life. Justin Dart, Chair of the Congressional Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of People with Disabilities, traversed the country holding public hearings which were attended by thousands of people with disabilities, friends, and families documenting the injustice of discrimination in the lives of people with disabilities.
A room which seated over people overflowed with persons with disabilities, parents and advocates. At the same time, both presidential candidates, Vice President Bush and Governor Dukakis, endorsed broad civil rights protections for people with disabilities. The disability community was determined to assure that President Bush would make good on his campaign promise, and reinvoked it repeatedly during the legislative process.
From that moment, the disability community mobilized, organizing a multi-layered strategy for passage. A team of lawyers and advocates worked on drafting and on the various and complex legal issues that were continually arising; top level negotiators and policy analysts strategized with members of Congress and their staffs; disability organizations informed and rallied their members; a lobbying system was developed using members of the disability community from around the country; witnesses came in from all over the country to testify before Congressional committees; lawyers and others prepared written answers to the hundreds of questions posed by members of Congress and by businesses; task forces were formed; networks were established to evoke responses from the community by telephone or mail; protests were planned — the disability rights movement coalesced around this goal: passage of the ADA.
This commitment was constantly put to the test. The disability community as a whole resisted any proposals made by various members of Congress to exclude people with AIDS or mental illness or to otherwise narrow the class of people covered. Even at the eleventh hour, after two years of endless work and a Senate and House vote in favor of the Act, the disability community held fast with the AIDS community to eliminate an amendment which would have excluded food-handlers with AIDS, running the risk of indefinitely postponing the passage or even losing the bill.
Likewise, all of the groups, whether it was an issue particularly affecting their constituencies or not, held fast against amendments to water down the transportation provisions.
The underlying principle of the ADA was to extend the basic civil rights protections extended to minorities and women to people with disabilities.
The Civil Rights Act prohibited employment discrimination by the private sector against women and racial and ethnic minorities, and banned discrimination against minorities in public accommodations. Before the ADA, no federal law prohibited private sector discrimination against people with disabilities, absent a federal grant or contract. The job of the disability rights movement during the ADA legislative process was to demonstrate to Congress and the American people the need for comprehensive civil rights protections to eradicate fundamental injustice -to demonstrate not only how this injustice harms the individual subjected to it, but also how it harms our society.
The first hearing in the st Senate on the new ADA was an historic event and set the tone for future hearings and lobbying efforts.
It was kicked off by the primary sponsors talking about their personal experiences with disability. Senator Harkin spoke of his brother who is deaf, Senator Kennedy of his son, who has a leg amputation, and Representative Coelho, who has epilepsy spoke about how the discrimination he faced almost destroyed him.
The witnesses spoke of their own experiences with discrimination. A young woman who has cerebral palsy, told the Senators about a local movie theater that would not let her attend because of her disability. The President of Galludet College, gave compelling testimony about what life is like for someone who is deaf, faced with pervasive communication barriers.
The audience was filled with Galludet students who waved their hands in approval. The committee also received boxes loaded with thousands of letters and pieces of testimony that had been gathered in hearings across the country the summer before from people whose lives had been damaged or destroyed by discrimination.
A woman testified that when she lost her breast to cancer, she also lost her job and could not find another one as a person with a history of cancer. At this Senate hearing and in all the many hearings in the House, members of Congress heard from witnesses who told their stories of discrimination.
In addition to equal opportunity provided by design simply by inclusion , the civil rights legislation also stipulates that employers must provide reasonable accommodations when necessary, for any employee with a qualifying disability. The ADA also made history by establishing specifications for providing accessibility to people with disabilities to all public accommodations businesses.
Practically any business that has 15 or more full-time employees is considered a public accommodation, and thus mandated by federal law to meet ADA compliance regulations.
Recently it has been officially determined that business websites are indeed included in accessible design requirements as well, neatly and completely incorporating people with disabilities into the collective equality that is the general population. The civil rights legislation was passed as a direct result of the Civil Rights Movement that had been growing and building since around the s, when the African American people began to feel the weight of their unbearable oppression and the hopelessness of their plight, and thus began their epochal insurrection.
This Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2nd, after first being proposed by President John F. Kennedy in June of , when it was opposed by a filibuster in the Senate. This civil rights law:.
The purpose was to end discrimination against minorities based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Later, sexual orientation and gender identity were added to the list.
The U. Department of Transportation is the authorized agency governing the enforcement of ADA regulations involving public transit. The FCC, or Federal Communications Commission, is responsible for enforcing ADA laws relating to telecommunications services, which primarily concerns people with disabilities related to hearing and speech impairments.
The FCC regulates telephone, television, and internet accessibility. There are actually many more government agencies and departments that play a large role in the enforcement and regulations for the Americans with Disabilities Act, and they are all working together towards a common goal: a future that is accessible to everyone equally.
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