ENVIRONMENTAL & SOCIAL JUSTICE
How the ADA Paved the Way for Workplace Protections for Women and LGBTQ+ People BY CHABELI CARRAZANA, THE 19TH
was that the United States had “constructed a world that doesn’t work for everybody” and that people needed to be accommodated to allow for participation and opportunity. That concept could be applied in the most concrete form in terms of changes to architecture and infra- structure — the ADA led to new regulations for buildings to include ramped entrances and parking spaces for disabled people. But it also could be applied to how prejudice and bias — and misunderstandings about health conditions — was preventing people from participating fairly in society, from employment to housing to health care. “That was a really profound conceptual aspect of the ADA,” Klein said, and one “that people are still struggling to understand.” The Bragdon case and the amendments to the ADA that followed in 2008 have helped expand the definition of disability. Since, the ADA has helped create a standard for workplace accommodations for wom- en and LGBTQ+ people, serving as the blueprint for new laws and interpretations. The recently passed Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is modeled on the ADA. So are workplace accommodation laws that protect domestic violence survivors. An expanded definition of disability also helped set the precedent for the ADA to cover gender dysphoria, or the distress many transgen - der people feel due to their body not aligning with their gender. Last year, a federal court ruled that gender dysphoria is a disability protect- ed under the ADA because it applies under the concept Klein argued before the Supreme Court in 1998: “It’s part of the non-discrimination mandate,” he told The 19th, “that you have to make these modifica - continued on page 58
The ADA has been used as the model for recent laws de- signed to end discrimination at work for other groups, including pregnant people and domestic violence survi- vors, further cementing its legacy as a foundational piece of civil rights law.
This story was originally published by The 19th .
Three decades ago, people with disabilities — and all workers mar- ginalized because of their identities — began to see a transformation in the workplace thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The law, signed by President George H.W. Bush on July 26, 1990, represented a new approach to understanding the full scope of what employees truly need in the workplace to do their jobs. That concept has evolved in the years since the ADA went into effect: Back then, courts were only starting to understand the power and promise of the ADA, said Ben Klein, who litigated the first case on the ADA. Klein represented the plaintiff in Bragdon v. Abbott, a 1998 Supreme Court case about a Maine woman who was refused treatment by a dentist because she had HIV. Klein, now the senior director of litigation and HIV law at LGBTQ+ civil rights organization GLAD, helped success - fully argue that Abbott was protected from discrimination thanks to the ADA. One of the ADA’s key foundational principles, Klein argued then,
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