Americans with Disabilities Act

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

Long title	An Act to establish a clear and comprehensive prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability
Acronyms (colloquial)	ADA
Nicknames	Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989
Enacted by	the 101st United States Congress
Effective	July 26, 1990
Citations
Public law	101-336
Statutes at Large	104 Stat. 327
Codification
Titles amended	42 U.S.C.: Public Health and Social Welfare
U.S.C. sections created	42 U.S.C. ch. 126 § 12101 et seq.
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate as S. 933 by Tom Harkin (D-IA) on May 9, 1988 Committee consideration by Senate Labor and Human Resources Passed the Senate on September 7, 1989 (76-8 Roll call vote 173, via Senate.gov) Passed the House on May 22, 1990 (unanimous voice vote) Reported by the joint conference committee on July 12, 1990; agreed to by the House on July 12, 1990 (377–28 Roll call vote 228, via Clerk.House.gov) and by the Senate on July 13, 1990 (91-6 Roll call vote 152, via Senate.gov) Signed into law by President George H. W. Bush on July 26, 1990
Major amendments
ADA Amendments Act of 2008
United States Supreme Court cases
Bragdon v. Abbott Olmstead v. L.C. Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. v. Williams

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. § 12101) is a US labor law that prohibits unjustified discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal. In addition, unlike the Civil Rights Act, the ADA also requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities, and imposes accessibility requirements on public accommodations.

In 1986, the National Council on Disability had recommended enactment of an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and drafted the first version of the bill which was introduced in the House and Senate in 1988. The final version of the bill was signed into law on July 26, 1990, by President George H. W. Bush. It was later amended in 2008 and signed by President George W. Bush with changes effective as of January 1, 2009.

ADA disabilities include both mental and physical medical conditions. A condition does not need to be severe or permanent to be a disability.Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations provide a list of conditions that should easily be concluded to be disabilities: deafness, blindness, an intellectual disability (formerly termed mental retardation), partially or completely missing limbs or mobility impairments requiring the use of a wheelchair, autism, cancer, cerebral palsy, diabetes, epilepsy, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and schizophrenia. Other mental or physical health conditions also may be disabilities, depending on what the individual's symptoms would be in the absence of "mitigating measures" (medication, therapy, assistive devices, or other means of restoring function), during an "active episode" of the condition (if the condition is episodic).

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