Dealing with Discrimination Against the Handicapped

A young man was fired from as job as a janitor in Colorado because he sometimes forgot the order of his duties and got confused. A judge, however, ordered him reinstated and to be given back pay, because the mentally disabled janitor had done an excellent job for different supervisors when properly trained and given a detailed list of duties. He had worked at a government job, and the judge ruled the employer had not been a model employer or made a reasonable accommodation for his handicap as all federal employers must do by law.

The law at that time required federal employers to make an accommodation for the disabled, even if the accommodation required money and required other employers to make an accommodation it did not require money. The incident was reported many years ago when I lived in Colorado and was even before the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. Does discrimination against the handicapped still exist today? You bet it does.

The website, www.spannj.org, recently reported at attempt to purchase a single-family home in New Jersey to become the home of for four adults with disabilities and a mentor. "Concerned citizens," however, including the mayor, were strongly opposed to the idea. They said such a facility does not belong in a residential facility, although the mayor said he did not have anything personally against the disabled. That sounds strangely to me like people once said when refusing to rent a house to a certain race. I wonder how many residents of that New Jersey town have children with special needs. It sounds like discrimination against the handicapped to me.

In March 2001, by Psychology Today, as reported on the website, www.findarticles.com, "despite legislative efforts, discrimination against the handicapped is everywhere. A report in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that a quarter of the disabled workers had experienced social and economic discrimination." The worst hit were those with such problems as shyness and depression.