Return to Home PageI am sorry that our agency's work has taken me to Salt Lake City on the same day as this important event. Trust that my heart is with you today and that my message to the community out here will be in the same spirit and purpose as your efforts in Washington, D.C. It has been my honor and my privilege over the past eight years to serve on this Commission and to help enforce our civil rights laws in America's workplaces. Over that time, and perhaps through my future service at the Commission as well, the Americans with Disabilities Act, as our newest law, has required the most attention and leadership as we endeavored to aggressively apply and defend its important values across the nation. That is as it should be. The law, requires by its very definition, attention to the facts of each case, each worker and each company. I believe in this law and its provisions. It empowers the community of Americans with disabilities and helps to overcome the massive under and unemployment faced by this enormous part of our population. But the ADA does more than that, it reminds us that we must respect the capabilities of all Americans. The sooner we internalize its principles and the requirement to always question whether we are being fair, the sooner we will draw nearer to the ideal that prejudice should no longer exist. We cannot afford to exclude from our workforce the many that disability discrimination and the stereotypes and fears that underlie it continue to shut out today.
We have lost a great advocate, perhaps one of the greatest civil rights activists that I have known, in the passing of Justin Dart, Jr. As much as any other, Justin played a major role in making the ADA a reality and refused to allow any of us since then to become complacent. He inspired me personally and in his memory I dedicate myself, and I believe we should do the same as an organization, to continue to work to protect the ADA and to strengthen and expand its protections. The ADA has been misunderstood by the media and the public and has faced excessive narrowing by the courts. More than any other institution, the EEOC is the appropriate body to fight for an ADA that works to protect people's rights and that extends its protections to all the people with disabilities that Justin Dart, Jr., the movement he is a part of, and Congress itself intended. We must educate the nation on its provisions and our responsibilities and rights thereunder. We must strongly enforce this law when employers violate it. We still have a long way to go. Together, we can continue this important fight.
This page was last modified on September 24, 2002.