What a landmark that Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was. Passed in 1990 when Bush I was president it empowered disabled people and let them come out of the shadows into the mainstream of life for the first time in history. Or something like that.
Only it didn’t. According to John Stossel it made employers shy away from hiring the disabled. Why was that?
One poll found that since the ADA was passed, the percentage of disabled men who were employed dropped. "Once you hire them, you can never fire them. They are lawsuit bombs," one employer said. "So we just tell them the job has been filled."
See how that works? People protected by the ADA will sue under ADA to claim that they were discriminated against. So now we need a law to target employers who lie about positions being filled.
Or take the wreck of the Exxon Valdez. Remember, that was the oil tanker that ran upon a reef because its captain was drunk. Exxon has paid, big time, for the disaster caused by its drunken employee, Joseph Hazelwood.
But guess what?
Exxon gave Joseph Hazelwood a job after he completed alcohol rehab; when Hazelwood then let the Exxon Valdez run aground, a jury found that he'd recklessly gotten drunk before taking command — and that the company had been reckless to give him the job.
Well, serves Exxon right, anyway. They should never have given Hazelwood such a sensitive job. Read on, pal.
So then the company decided people who've had a drug or drinking problem may not hold safety-sensitive jobs. The result? You guessed it — employees with a history of alcohol abuse sued under the ADA, demanding their right to hold safety-sensitive jobs. Employers can't win. They get sued if they do, sued if they don't.
What do you think? How about we repeal the Americans with Disabilities Act and start over.
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