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By AUDREY HOFFER Washington, D.C. - Americans with disabilities told a House judiciary subcommittee Thursday that the Americans with Disabilities Act is not being implemented to the letter of the law because it excludes people whom Congress intended to cover. To remedy this, Congress should pass the ADA Restoration Act of 2007, said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). Hoyer and House Republican Jim Sensenbrenner of Menomonee Falls introduced the ADA Restoration Act on July 26, the 17th anniversary of passage of the original Americans with Disabilities Act legislation. "The new bill doesn't seek to expand the scope of the original law," Hoyer said. "Rather we want to ensure that the promise we originally made is kept." Congress passed the 1990 statute to protect individuals with physical or mental impairment from discrimination in all walks of life. Over the past 17 years, claims of discrimination filed under the law have been narrowly interpreted by the courts. The result is that people who have mitigated the effects of their disability - such as diabetes or epilepsy - with medicine are not protected from discrimination by the Americans with Disabilities Act, and their civil rights are being violated, said Hoyer, whose late wife had epilepsy. "If you try to be very good, if you cope with your disability, get a job, pay taxes, try not to be a burden, then you get labeled as too high functioning and, therefore, not disabled enough," said Cheryl Sensenbrenner, chairperson of the American Association of People with Disabilities, a national nonprofit working on behalf of more than 50 million adults and children with disabilities. 'A Catch-22' "It doesn't make sense. It's a Catch-22 situation," she said. Cheryl Sensenbrenner, 57, suffered a spinal cord injury when she was 22. She wore a leg brace and used a cane at the hearing and said that at times she uses a wheelchair. She is the wife of the Wisconsin lawmaker. "She has a passion for accessibility," said Carol Voss of IndependenceFirst, a nonprofit independent living center that serves metropolitan Milwaukee. Voss worked closely with Cheryl Sensenbrenner when Sensenbrenner was twice chair of the organization's annual fund-raising event. "She sees that people with disabilities want to do everything that people without disabilities do: go to museums, get into stores, fully participate in their community," Voss said. Lawrence Lorber, an employment lawyer with Proskauer Rose LLP in Washington, spoke against passage of the bill on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He said the act would require employers to apply it to practically every circumstance and every employee who complained of discrimination. "Somebody who has a cold, somebody who lost their eyeglasses and comes to work 45 minutes late," he said. "We are talking about turning this ADA Restoration Act into the universal employment act." Today the bill has 217 co-sponsors, including most of the Wisconsin delegation.
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