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Congressmen Join Disability Groups in Opposing Alito Nomination
More National Organizations JoinRepresentatives Barney Frank (D-MA) and Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) today joined leaders of national disability organizations in stating their opposition to the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. At a press conference in the U.S. Capitol, the Congressmen decried Judge Alito’s view, expressed on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and elsewhere, that Congress lacked authority to enact civil rights legislation such as the laws that have enabled children and adults with mental or physical disabilities to participate equally in society. States have argued that position when challenging laws that ban discrimination on the basis of disability, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Amendments Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Additional disability organizations today joined with the three groups hosting the press conference – the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL), the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, and ADAWatch/National Coalition for Disability Rights—in overtly opposing the Alito nomination. They are: the Alliance of Disability Advocates, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Find (DREDF),the National Association of Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA) and the World Association of People with Disabilities. “NCIL refuses to stand idly by,” said John Lancaster, executive director of the National Council on Independent Living, in remarks this morning, “as a President who has promised us a ‘New Freedom Initiative’ to uphold the Americans with Disabilities Act nominates a judicial activist whose record strongly suggests that he is predisposed to dismantle many of these landmark civil rights achievements.” “Judge Alito’s record places him well outside the mainstream and clearly to the right of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a frequent swing vote on cases involving disability rights,” commented Jim Ward, president of ADA Watch. “If Judge Alito had been sitting in Justice O’Connor’s chair,” said Jennifer Mathis, senior staff attorney of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, “important cases such as Tennessee v. Lane would likely have come out the other way. George Lane would still have to crawl up the courthouse steps to get to his own trial.”
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