Political and Legislative Attacks

To date the ADA has withstood various political and media attacks, including myths and half-truths that have focused on psychiatric disabilities. Challenges in the courts have set some limits, notably the Garrett case and Sutton, Murphy and Kirkenberg in the U.S. Supreme Court. The attempt, in Olmstead, to limite the ADA's integration mandate backfired, leading to enhanced efforts to create community services for people who would otherwise be institutionalized. However, other cases are wending their way through the federal court system.

On the legislative front, many mental disability advocates believe that attacks on the ADA's protection for alcoholics and former substance abusers, defeated in the 104th Congress, may be a precursor to attacks on the Act's protection for people with psychiatric impairments.

Despite these attacks, data suggest that the ADA has had some positive effect in breaking down some of the barriers it was designed to eliminate. In a 1996 poll by United Cerebral Palsy Associates, 46% of respondents (including people with disabilities, their families, friends and advocates) said that there is greater acceptance and inclusion into the community for people with disabilities; 75% said they believed public attitudes about people with disabilities had changed as a result of the ADA. Unfortunately, 50% of respondents believed that employment opportunities were among the areas least changed by the ADA.

For more information on current threats to the ADA, please see ADA Watch.