Americans with Disabilities Act amendments discussed by New York Discrimination Lawyer Marc Rapaport

2009 will long be regarded as a watershed year in the decades-long struggle to protect disabled employees from employment discrimination. The "ADA Amendment Act of 2008" (the "ADAA") is now the law, and there is now a dramatically different set of standards that courts must use to determine which employees qualify as disabled, and thus entitled to protection under the ADA's anti-discrimination provisions.

Since the ADA's passage in 1991, the protections that were intended by the law were stymied by overly restrictive interpretations federal courts in determining which employees met the ADA's definition of being suffering from a "disability." The ADAA was specifically intended to provide anti-discrimination protections to a much larger universe of people. Under the new standards, the definition of "disability" is much more lenient and flexible. The analytical approach of courts must radically shift: the hyper-technical focus on employees' physical impairments is now history. Courts are now required to carry out the law's remedial purpose by focusing more on the conduct of the employer, and whether the employer, in its personnel policies and practices, is complying with the law.

The broader scope of coverage mandated by the ADAA is the result of several key changes in how the Courts must ascertain whether an individual qualifies as disabled. These include:

Mandating a more flexible and lenient construction of "disability;"
Expanding the list of "Major Life Activities" that are considered in ascertaining whether a disorder or impairment has a sufficiently significant impact so as to qualify an individual for protection;
Prohibiting courts from disqualifying individuals from the ADA's protections based on the curative effects of medications, treatment, or other remedial measures.
Clarifying that a disease in remission may still qualify as a disability.

The foregoing are just some of the benefits of the ADAA. The bottom line is that more individuals are entitled to protection against disability discrimination, and the spirit of the law will now be more fully implemented.

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