Effectiveness of The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) (Essay Sample)

Effectiveness of ADA
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The ADA forms part of civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination and is an expansion of the civil rights act of 1964. The civil rights act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion and nation of origin while American with Disability Act prohibits discrimination on basis of disabilities (Pennsylvania Bar Institute & United States, 2013). ADA applies to those people who meet the definition of disabled as per the act. Individuals are protected by ADA if they have physical or mental impairments that hinder him or her from performing major life activities. Major life activities refer to basic components of a person’s life such as talking, walking, learning and seeing. Under the ADA, a person is disabled if he or she cannot perform at least one of the major activities. While the act does not mention all the disabilities, some of the disabilities include but not limited to reliance on walkers, deafness, and blindness, use of wheelchair, certain types of mental illness and a learning disabilities.
Title I of ADA requires that employers with at least 15 employees offer qualified individuals equal benefits as those without disabilities (Pennsylvania Bar Institute & United States, 2013). Such benefits include hiring, training and other employment benefits. The law prohibits discrimination of disabled people during hiring, recruitment, promotions, training or any other employment benefit. Employers are required to offer reasonable accommodation to the person with disability unless this presents undue hardship (Pennsylvania Bar Institute & United States, 2013). In addition, public transport should not discriminate the disabled in process of offering their services. The act has empowered the American with disabilities in a variety of ways. It has broken barriers to careers as well as full employment. ADA is enforced by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The different cases solved by EEOC to obtain relief for individuals with disabilities shows how significant ADA is to the Americans.
One of the cases resolved by EEOC is that of EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co. EEOC claimed that Sears had an inflexible employees compensation leave exhaustion policy and that employees were terminated without being offered reasonable accommodations for those with disabilities thereby violating ADA (EEOC, n.d.). EEOC gave employees who had been terminated under the Sears compensation leave policy and 235 people were found to be eligible to share the settlement (EEOC, n.d.). Individuals were compensated with each person being awarded about $26,300 and Sears had to pay about 6.2 million for the settlement. EEOC did not retain any of the funds and all the money went to the affected people.
Another case resolved by EEOC is that of United Airlines where it had been alleged that it violated ADA by its overtime policy. The claim was first made by Samuel Chetcuti who worked for United Airlines at San Francisco (EEOC, n.d.). The policy d...