SUPPORT ADA restoration 
Keep the Promise to End Unfair Employment Discrimination

Every American wants the opportunity to work and to be judged based on performance.
   
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed by President George H.W. Bush in order to give people with disabilities a chance to be judged fairly.  

Unfair discrimination harms all Americans.  Just as other civil rights laws prohibit employers from basing decisions on characteristics like race or sex, Congress wanted the ADA to stop employers from making decisions based on disability.

People with disabilities want to work to their full ability and not have to turn to public assistance to live.  The ADA is supposed to level the playing field so everyone who wants a job has an equal opportunity to work.

But this is not happening for people with disabilities.
   
•	The employment rate of people with disabilities has not improved.
•	Two-thirds of people with disabilities who do not have a job indicate they would work if they could find employment.
•	Courts decide against people who challenge disability discrimination 97% of the time, often before the person has even had a chance to show that the employer treated them unfairly.

Stop employers and courts from treating people with disabilities unfairly.
   
The courts have created an absurd Catch-22 by allowing employers to say a person is “too disabled” to do the job but not “disabled enough” to be protected by the law.  This is wrong! 

•	People with conditions like epilepsy, diabetes, HIV, cancer, hearing loss, and mental illness who manage their disabilities with medication, prosthetics, hearing aids, etc. – or “mitigating measures” – are viewed as “too functional” to have a disability and are denied the ADA’s protection from employment discrimination.  
•	People denied a job or fired because an employer mistakenly believes they cannot perform the job – or because the employer does not want “people like that” in the workplace – are also denied the ADA’s protection from employment discrimination. 

Support ADA Restoration
   
Congress must correct the courts’ misuse of the definition of “disability,” and harmonize the ADA with other civil rights laws.  Action is needed to ensure that the courts interpret the ADA fairly, and as Congress intended.