She notes that two different approaches are available to try to attain better economic opportunities for disabled people: a civil-rights remedy approach under which “employers are required to provide access and accommodations as a matter of individual right,” and a subsidy approach under which government provides an “offset to business costs based on the notion that it is in the government’s (and society’s) interest to see that disabled people are employed.” As Russell correctly predicted, the courts have been unwilling to “initiate an economic revolution which forces businesses to provide accommodations.” Russell appropriately highlights some of the problems with the reasonable accommodation framework built into the ADA. While it is important for law professors to teach students to use the tool of the ADA to achieve reform, it is also important for us to teach, as Russell has said, “What Disability Rights Cannot Do.” It is important to recognize that “the economic system is a crucial contributing factor to a backlash against civil rights laws (the ADA in particular), the poor enforcement of those laws, and the lack of economic advancement of disabled people.” Among the many insights contained in Capitalism & Disability, her prescient criticism of the American with Disabilities (ADA) Act merits special attention. Read the rest of the posts here.Īs the disability justice movement gains greater acceptance in the United States, it is helpful to read or re-read the work of Marta Russell, one of the most influential disability justice activists in the 1990s and 2000s in the United States.
This post is part of a symposium on Marta Russell and the Political Economy of Disability.
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