It's The LAW

Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Education, Oct, 2000 by Jennifer C. Patterson

Marshall Mitchell is the director of the Disability Resource Center at Washington State University in Pullman and serves as the school's ADA coordinator. He explained that administrators will need to be aware of the ADA as it affects four different areas: facilities, student accommodations, employment issues, and access for the general public.

"If you offer a program, you must provide equal opportunity for all people," he said. For example, if you offer a student parking lot, it must be accessible for people with disabilities and include spaces large enough for vans. Or, for an event open to the public such as a sporting event or concert, you will want to provide for a sign-language interpreter and be able to accommodate assisted-listening devices.

However, Mitchell cautioned that universities must provide "equal opportunity, not equal results." He finds that this issue arises most frequently when it comes to providing academic accommodations for a documented learning disability.

Mitchell explained that, although most schools have a resource center that carefully reviews disability documentation and suggests specific accommodations (such as a writing accommodation for a processing disability), many faculty assume that the process isn't rigorous enough and that anyone can qualify. Yet, the ones that assume this often do not ask questions, making education difficult. "[We're] not asking to lower standards or requirements. We're teaching with the goal of [students] learning and evaluating to find out if they've learned. How you do that shouldn't matter," he said.

Yet, the ADA is not immutable. As with many laws and regulations affecting colleges, it is continually being refined by court cases that determine the scope and application of its provisions.

For example, in September 1998, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit considered the case of a woman with a learning disability who had requested accommodations when taking her New York bar examination. Although she had self-accommodated in the past and her disability was poorly documented because of the lack of information about learning disabilities available to society and to the university during her education, she claimed that the bar examiners should allow for accommodations. In the decision in Bartlett v. New York Board of Law Examiners, the circuit court determined that the board of law examiners did not have discretion to determine whether a test taker has a disability, and that self accommodation does not foreclose the finding of a disability.

In late April of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would consider whether state agencies and public colleges can be sued under the ADA. At the heart of the argument is whether the 11th Amendment guarantee of states' rights is superceded by federal laws barring discrimination. The results could significantly blunt the impact of the ADA. If the court decides in favor of the states' rights argument, students and employees of public colleges could be prevented from suing their colleges for damages under the ADA.