News Release

NCD #02-392
November 15, 2002
Contact: Mark S. Quigley
202-272-2004
202-272-2074 TTY
mquigley@ncd.gov

National Council on Disability Releases Latest Americans with Disabilities Act and the Supreme Court Policy Paper

WASHINGTON--The National Council on Disability (NCD) today released Significance of the ADA Finding That Some 43 Million Americans Have Disabilities, the latest addition to the ongoing policy brief series analyzing and responding to certain problematic aspects of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Significance of the ADA Finding That Some 43 Million Americans Have Disabilities (http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/43million.html) examines the sources of the 43 million figure, the congressional understanding behind its inclusion in the ADA, the conclusions the Supreme Court has based on it, and problems with the Court's interpretation of the figure.

In future papers in this series, NCD will examine various specific substantive aspects of the Court's rulings that have weakened or restricted the impact of the ADA, including the highly restrictive interpretation of the ADA's definition of "disability." Another major area to be addressed concerns constitutional limits on the power of Congress to enact disability rights laws such as the ADA and other civil rights legislation.

NCD plans to address some limitations the Court has imposed on the remedies available in ADA cases and take a cross-issue look at the consequences of the Supreme Court's decisions by contrasting the state of the law before the decisions were rendered with the legal situation after the decisions, to identify undesirable and unjust results in the decisions of the lower courts as a result of the Supreme Court's rulings. NCD will also summarize instances of unaddressed discrimination and injustices stemming from the Court's rulings that do not result in reported court decisions.

NCD will then develop legislative proposals for addressing those issues that appear appropriate for legislative correction, and present those proposals, along with pertinent supportive material from the previous papers in a final, comprehensive report Righting the ADA.