Yesterday the Department of Justice began removing guidance related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the law that protects disabled people’s rights to access and accommodations in public.
While the law itself remains on the books, the definition of legal “access” is developed by guidance from the US Access Board. The Board, comprised of at least half disabled people, is supposed to meet annually, but their meeting was cancelled in January. Now the law is being hollowed out by the DOJ.
The DOJ is using a January Executive Order aimed at “lowering the cost of living” as the justification for the rollback.
That accommodating disabled people is too expensive is age-old rhetoric favored by eugenicists and Nazis, and has been used to justify segregation, institutionalization, neglect, forced sterilization, and murder of disabled people here and abroad.
So far, 11 guidance documents have been removed, with protections ranging from self-service gas stations, customer communication, hotel accessibility, general public-facing businesses, and several pandemic-era additions. (Links are to archived content; pages have since been removed.)
This is an ongoing story.