More than three decades after passage of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, advocates worry progress is slipping amid attacks on disability rights and uncertainty over the future of services and supports.
Saturday will mark 35 years since President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA. The legislation, which passed with broad bipartisan support, was the first comprehensive civil rights law in the world for people with disabilities, barring discrimination in education, transportation, employment, voting and other areas of public life.
“The ADA has helped make our country more inclusive and accessible in all aspects of life,” said Alison Barkoff, a health law and policy professor at George Washington University who previously led the federal Administration for Community Living. “It has helped move our society from one where segregating people with disabilities was the default to one where most disabled people and their families have an expectation of inclusion in schools, workplaces and the broader community.”
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But despite the transformative changes brought by the ADA, Barkoff and other advocates say the law’s promise is far from fulfilled and they’re concerned that the nation could backslide.
“Too many people with disabilities still face barriers to inclusion, particularly people with more significant support needs. Disabled people still face discriminatory stereotypes and bias, for example in navigating the health care system and in parenting,” Barkoff said. “I am very concerned about the serious threats to disability rights by the courts and new federal policies, creating the real possibility of the undoing of years of progress.”
The ADA anniversary comes just weeks after President Donald Trump signed legislation approving the largest cuts in history to Medicaid, which serves as the backbone of the nation’s disability services system. At the same time, advocates note that the Trump administration is working to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, change rules related to physical accessibility and push funding cuts for some disability programs.
“These are not isolated developments,” said Katy Neas, CEO of The Arc of the United States. “Together, they show a national, coordinated pattern of erosion. Protections are being stripped. Services are being cut. And people with disabilities are being pushed back out.”
Neas, who was a young Senate staffer in 1990 and worked on the ADA, said the law was designed to prevent this scenario.
“I’ve never seen a more urgent moment than this one,” she said.
While the stakes may be higher, disability advocates have always had to fight, Maria Town, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities, said at a recent event her group hosted with the Bipartisan Disability Caucus for lawmakers and disability rights leaders to mark the ADA anniversary.
“When I think about the ADA, among the many things I think about is the realization that from the moment it passed, it required education and defense. In the 35 years since its passage, almost every Congress has introduced a piece of legislation to weaken the ADA,” she said. “Although today looks very different than 1990, we are going to use the tactics we have at hand to continue to mobilize, to continue to educate, to continue to defend the Americans with Disabilities Act.”
The key to making that happen will be uniting people with disabilities, according to Tony Coelho, who sponsored the ADA as a member of Congress.
“The problem is our community is not together,” Coelho told those gathered at the event. “And so while we blame everybody else, I want to say very openly that our community has to get back together like we did on the ADA, back together like we did on the ADA Amendments Act and raise our voices to get done what we want. Right now there are attacks as Maria pointed out. If our community will rise up, I always say it comes from the bottom, not from the top. And if we as a community rise up, those folks in power will pay attention.”
