ADA Amendments Act Now Fully in Place

EEOC Announces Final Bipartisan Regulations for the ADA Amendments Act
(U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)
March 25, 2011
(Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express)

WASHINGTON, DC– [Excerpt] The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s final regulations to implement the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) are now available on the Federal Register website. Like the law they implement, the regulations are designed to simplify the determination of who has a “disability” and make it easier for people to establish that they are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The ADAAA went into effect on Jan. 1, 2009. In the ADAAA, Congress directed the EEOC to revise its regulations to conform to changes made by the Act, and expressly authorized the EEOC to do so. The EEOC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on proposed implementing regulations on September 23, 2009, and received well over 600 public comments in response. The final regulations reflect the feedback the EEOC received from a broad spectrum of stakeholders.

The ADAAA overturned several Supreme Court decisions that Congress believed had interpreted the definition of “disability” too narrowly, resulting in a denial of protection for many individuals with impairments such as cancer, diabetes or epilepsy. The ADAAA states that the definition of disability should be interpreted in favor of broad coverage of individuals. The effect of these changes is to make it easier for an individual seeking protection under the ADA to establish that he or she has a disability within the meaning of the ADA.

The ADAAA and the final regulations keep the ADA’s definition of the term “disability” as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; a record (or past history) of such an impairment; or being regarded as having a disability. But the law made significant changes in how those terms are interpreted, and the regulations implement those changes.

Entire article:
EEOC Announces Final Bipartisan Regulations for the ADA Amendments Act
http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/3-24-11.cfm
Related:
Regulations To Implement the Equal Employment Provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act, as Amended (Federal Register)
http://tinyurl.com/62hmmnw