John Stossel, Poor Baby

John Stossel, poor baby, must have had to wait to sit down in a public restroom. His ambivalence about restroom design demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about what the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is all about. He should spend one day tagging along with a person who uses a wheelchair in any city of the United States. Better yet he should borrow a wheelchair and try to follow that person through that one day. My invitation is always open. His blog post, Disabilities Act Feeds a Suing Public demonstrates his lack of understanding.

The architecture of this country started out completely inaccessible to anyone who could not navigate stairs, simple street corned curbs, revolving door and heavy ones. Twenty year on from the passage of the ADA we are only scratching the tip of the problem of barriers that are intentionally built that prevent person with mobility limitations to participate in this society. I will bet that Mr. Stossel never waited in the Mens restroom for the one end stall to be vacated by the guy with a suitcase while the use of the other nine stalls turned over several times. I will also bet that he never flew from New York to LA on a jet that did not have a restroom that he could use if he wanted to.

Even when there are restrooms that have been remodeled, the dimensions are many time not to code. If the sink is too low, it is too low. This is a matter for the ADA. If the wiring is deficient and ground fault outlets are not installed where they are required, this is an electrical code violation. Both code violations are the result of professionals not doing their jobs correctly, poor workmanship, faulty inspections. While the business owner is ultimately liable for the deficiencies and their corrections, he does have recourse, unless he did the work himself.

Mr. Stossel also doesn’t have a clue when he talks about service animals and snakes in particular. “Millions” of small businesses will never have a customer with a large service snake that will disrupt the operations. Many businesses that did have a customer with a service snake never even knew it. We are not talking about Anacondas and Pythons here. If other customers were riled up by inflammatory language like in Stossel’s September 1, 2010 blog rant they would realize that there is nothing to worry about. I challenge Stossel to cite one single documented incident where a large service snake accosted a nearby restaurant patron anywhere in the US.

While there are people who specialize in discrimination lawsuits, some based on the ADA, there are hundreds of thousands of slip-and-fall suits, soft tissue automobile collision claims, Workers Compensation frauds, dog bite claims, racial, gender and age discrimination suits. None of these are disability related. Some are valid and some are merely the result of aggressive ambivalence chasing. Attorneys have to make a living too. They can allege a case on the flimsiest of facts, just like John Stossel.

Just “Because the law turns ‘protected’ people into potential lawsuits.” And “Most ADA litigation occurs when an employee is fired, so the safest way to avoid those costs is not to hire the disabled in the first place.” is not a reason to not have the protections. Employment of persons with disabilities might very well have gone down AND partly because of the Federal regulations that prospective employers seek to avoid. The low employment rates for person with disabilities have a lot to do with the lack of suitable transportation to get to the job and home.

The ADA employment regulations created two classes of job duty: Essential duties and non-essential duties. The essential ones can be required of an employee, even one with a disability. The non-essential ones can be reassigned. While there are requirements that employers provide “reasonable accommodations” for an employee with a disability, those regulations do not extend to expenses so large that another employee would need to be discharged to pay for them.

Stossel says, “Under the ADA, Olson notes, fairness does not mean treating disabled people the same as non-disabled people. Rather it means accommodating them. In other words, the law requires that people be treated unequally.” This argument is the same as the old fear that equal rights for women would require that both sexes use the same restroom. Being treated fairly does not mean being treated exactly the same. Just look at the queues at the restrooms at any large public venue. It is painfully clear to all women that the venue having exactly the same number of stations in the Mens room as for the Womens is not equitable. Most US facilities are in this manner deficient. What is the loss of one stall to make one larger when the overall number is 50% too low.

ADA accessibility standards benefit everyone. The Washington DC Metro Rail system has typically one elevator to enter every station and one that gets a person to the track level. It took a lawsuit back in the 1970s when the system was being built to make that so. Yes it added construction costs. Yes it adds maintenance and repair costs. But back then nobody ever considered the number of women pushing baby carriages through the system. They never considered that any man would be pushing that baby carriage! Today, every day, every station – baby carriages on the elevators. All boarding is done at train car floor level – no steps into or out of the cars. Wide fare gates accommodate more baby carriages, suitcases, wide people, parents holding the hands of children than people using wheelchairs! WMATA doesn’t have restrooms for the public in any station, not because of the ADA or accessibility laws, but because they did not want the expense of cleaning and repairing ANY restrooms.

There are no ADA POLICE. That leaves it up to individuals and their lawyers to take on the resistant business owners. The American legal system is notoriously fickle when it comes to making consistent decisions. When a business comes before the bench on an alleged violation of the ADA, it is usually not the first complaint that was registered.

“Finally, the ADA has led to some truly bizarre results.” Yes alcoholic employees are classified as persons with disabilities if they identify themselves and seek treatment. They do not need to be employed in safety sensitive positions such as piloting an oil tanker. To be fair to Captain Hazelwood, he was in his cabin sleeping when his second in command ran the Exxon Valdez aground.

Federal regulations will usually reduce short term profits for businesses that need regulations. I hope John Stossel never sustains an ugly scar on his face because then he might not be allowed on the television any more. And that won’t be a protected disability.