Americans With Disabilities Act

Many New Job-Killing Regulations from the Obama Administration

by Hans Bader on August 30, 2011 · 1 comment

in Economy, International, Legal, Regulation

Andrew Stiles describes “Ten Job-Destroying Regulations” from the Obama administration that will wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs. Another job-killing regulation is the Obama administration’s recent demand that trucking companies employ alcoholics as truckers rather than assigning them to less safety-sensitive positions — a demand that will lead to costly lawsuits against trucking companies by accident victims, and thus discourage anyone from setting up new trucking companies.

Still another is the Obama EEOC’s current practice of suing some employers who consider applicants’ arrest records and criminal convictions in hiring — a practice it is now considering broadening, through agency guidance further restricting consideration of applicants’ criminal histories in hiring decisions. If you were thinking of starting a new business, wouldn’t you be less likely to do so if you thought you would have no freedom as to whom you could hire, and no freedom to consider someone’s dangerousness or the content of their character before hiring them? If you don’t hire a criminal, the EEOC may sue you for “disparate impact”; but if you do hire the criminal, you may later be sued under a state law for “negligent hiring” if the criminal harms someone on the job or while doing errands for your company.

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Being Male Is a Disability Under ADA, Says Prominent Lawyer

by Hans Bader on October 10, 2008 · 6 comments

in Economy, Legal, Politics as Usual

Earlier, I wrote about how I legally qualified as disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act because of my difficulty sleeping and (in the past) because of my shyness.  Amazingly, Congress recently broadened the ADA even further in response to whining by “civil-rights” groups that the law didn’t define “disability” broadly enough.

Now, a prominent lawyer has concluded that being male is a disability, too, reports the National Law Journal.  “If sleep disorders and sex problems can be used as criteria for filing disability claims, as courts have held, “being male” could also be a legally recognized disability.  So claims Louis Solomon, a partner and co-head of the Global Litigation Department at Proskauer Rose, who believes ‘maleness’ is on its way to becoming a new category for disability claims.   Men, he argues, have a greater susceptibility to certain diseases, a shorter life expectancy and a testosterone level that predisposes them to more aggressive behavior — all factors that could be classified as a disability.”

There are additional reasons why males may qualify as disabled.   Statutory amendments to the ADA now define impairment of bodily functions as a disability per se.  But men go deaf faster than women, and generally have inferior senses of smell.  My wife smokes, and I don’t.  But she has still has a vastly greater sense of smell than I do.  And my baby daughter can smell things I don’t even notice.  It sounds like I’m disabled on that basis, too.

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