The Americans With Disabilities Act

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990 to protect disabled workers and their immediate family members from discrimination and harassment at work. Employers often believe disabled employees cannot handle the same roles and responsibilities of nondisabled employees, so this legislation is incredibly important to ensure disabled individuals are treated equally.

Under the ADA, employers cannot take an employee’s disability into consideration when making any decisions related to hiring, firing, promoting, wage determinations, or job benefits. This is a federal law that applies to all employers with fifteen or more employees.

The two laws also disagree when it comes to defining a “major life activity.” The FEHA includes work as a major life activity, meaning if your disability limits your ability to work a job, you qualify as a disabled person under this law. However, the ADA does not have work listed as a major life activity, so you must be able to show how your disability limits your ability to perform other activities outlined in the ADA.

Finally, the FEHA and ADA have different processes for evaluating an individual to determine whether he is disabled or not. The ADA requires a disabled person to take an evaluation in a mitigated state. For example, if an employee who was hard of hearing were to be evaluated following the ADA’s guidelines, he would be required to wear a hearing aid at the time of the evaluation. This type of mitigation is not required under a FEHA evaluation.

The FEHA allows permits individuals to file a disability discrimination suit if their employer has discriminated against them because of a perceived disability, even if it doesn’t exist. This is not allowed under the ADA. Overall, disabled individuals will find it is much easier to gain protection under the FEHA than it is under the ADA.