Origins of Disability Rights Law

 The legal and political roots of the ADA are deep in the civil rights era of the 1960's. This is true in both a formal legal and in a political sense. In terms of formal legal precedent, the ADA has been described as,

 
"... an amalgam of two great civil rights statutes, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title V of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 ... The ADA generally uses the framework of Titles II and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for coverage and enforcement ... and the terms and concepts of Section 504 ... for what constitutes discrimination."
 
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits discrimination on the basis of a disability towards "otherwise qualified" people with disabilities by recipients of federal financial assistance. The passage of Section 504 established the critical bridge between disability and anti-discrimination policy and law. The statutory language of Section 504 is based on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, Section 504 is much narrower in its coverage. Unlike the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 504 does not mandate compliance with nondiscrimination requirements by employers or public accommodations in the private sector. It also does not reach publicly funded programs which are not recipients of federal financial assistance.
 
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which contained Section 504 was the product of controversy and compromise between Congress and the Nixon Administration. Richard Nixon had vetoed an earlier version of the Rehabilitation Act in 1972, because it included provisions expanding the traditional vocational focus of the federal/state rehabilitation system into the area of non-vocational, independent living services. Section 504 and the other provisions of Title V, however, were not part of the dispute between Congress and the Administration. To the congressional leadership of the time, many of whom had been supporters of the civil rights legislation of the previous decade, the extension of the guarantees of equal opportunity and equal protection to people with disabilities seemed a necessary step, in keeping with the fundamental values of our democratic, constitutional traditions. In practice, however, addressing the particular forms of discrimination experienced by people with disabilities posed new and distinctive challenges.
 
It was four years before regulations implementing Section 504 were finally issued by the Carter Administration. The publication of the regulations occurred only after an aggressive national campaign by disability rights advocates to prevent weakening of the regulations and further delay in their implementation. The highlight of the campaign was an occupation of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) offices in San Francisco by people with disabilities which lasted for approximately four weeks.


Reference: Wodatch J. (1990). The ADA: What it says. Worklife, 3, 3