Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) and the Capitol Crawl

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a United States civil rights law, signed by President George H. W. Bush on 26 July 1990, that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. It was the result of years of campaigning by the disability rights movement, whose protests included the dramatic “Capitol Crawl” in March 1990. The ADA reshaped workplaces, public transport and buildings across the country and became a model for disability laws elsewhere.

Background: the disability rights movement

Before the 1970s American law offered disabled people little protection. Many were kept in institutions, denied education or jobs, and shut out of buildings and public transport that they could not physically use. Inspired by the struggles that produced the Civil Rights Act of 1964, activists began to argue that disability was a civil rights issue.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 banned disability discrimination in programmes receiving federal money. When the government delayed issuing the rules to enforce it, activists occupied federal offices in 1977, most famously for more than three weeks in San Francisco, until the regulations were signed. The protest group ADAPT, formed in Denver in 1983 after earlier local protests over inaccessible buses, used civil disobedience to demand accessible public transport.

Writing the law

In 1986 the National Council on the Handicapped, a federal advisory body, recommended a comprehensive civil rights law for disabled people. A first version of the ADA was introduced in Congress in 1988 by Senator Lowell Weicker and Representative Tony Coelho, both of whom had personal experience of disability. In 1989 Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, whose brother was deaf, became the lead sponsor in the Senate.

Justin Dart Jr. and his wife Yoshiko travelled to every state collecting thousands of stories of discrimination from disabled people. The bill received bipartisan support and the backing of the Bush administration, but business groups worried about costs, and debates over coverage of people with HIV/AIDS and over public transport slowed its progress.

The Capitol Crawl

On 12 March 1990, with the bill stalled in the House of Representatives, around 1,000 people marched from the White House to the US Capitol. At the foot of the Capitol’s west front steps, dozens of activists, about 60 by most accounts, left their wheelchairs, crutches and other aids behind and hauled themselves up the 83 stone steps. Among them was an eight-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, whose climb was widely photographed.

The “Capitol Crawl” was intended to show how inaccessible public life was for many disabled Americans. The next day ADAPT activists occupied the Capitol rotunda, and more than 100 were arrested. The protests drew national attention and increased the pressure on Congress to act.

Passage and signing

The House passed its version of the bill in May 1990, and the final text was approved by large majorities in both houses in July. On 26 July 1990 President Bush signed the act before about 3,000 guests on the South Lawn of the White House. In his speech he called for the “shameful wall of exclusion” to “finally come tumbling down”, comparing the moment to the recent fall of the Berlin Wall.

What the law does

The ADA is divided into several main parts, called titles:

• Title I bans discrimination in employment by employers with 15 or more workers and requires reasonable accommodations.
• Title II covers state and local government services, including public transport.
• Title III covers public accommodations such as shops, restaurants, hotels, cinemas and doctors’ offices, and requires new buildings to be accessible.
• Title IV requires telephone relay services for deaf and hard-of-hearing people.

Legacy

The ADA brought kerb cuts, ramps, accessible buses, lifts and captioning into everyday American life. In Olmstead v. L.C. (1999) the Supreme Court ruled that unnecessary segregation of disabled people in institutions could violate the act. After later court rulings narrowed the definition of disability, Congress passed the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 to restore broad coverage.

The law influenced the international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adopted by the United Nations in 2006. Activists point out that employment gaps and physical barriers remain, but the ADA is widely seen as one of the most important civil rights laws since the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Timeline

• 1973: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act bans disability discrimination in federally funded programmes.
• 1977, April: Disability activists occupy federal offices in San Francisco to demand Section 504 regulations.
• 1988: The first version of the ADA is introduced in Congress.
• 1989, September: The Senate passes the ADA.
• 1990, 12 March: The Capitol Crawl takes place in Washington, D.C.
• 1990, July: Both houses of Congress approve the final bill.
• 1990, 26 July: President George H. W. Bush signs the ADA.
• 2008, 25 September: The ADA Amendments Act is signed into law.

Why it matters

The ADA established that disabled people have the same civil rights as other Americans and that society must remove the barriers that exclude them. Won through determined activism, it changed the physical landscape of the United States and inspired disability rights laws around the world.