For those of you who are interested, the annual report of the ADA Advisory Committee for the year 2013 is out. The link is below:
I am all for reports. The problem is that the reports that I have gotten indicate that the Connecticut Judicial Branch routinely denies the vast majority of requests for reasonable accommodations. I will continue to report this until I hear otherwise.
The worst discrimination is against people with invisible disabilities who often find that they are denied custody of their children, or even access to their children simply by virtue of having a mental health disability, even though that disability has never, up to that point (i.e. until a divorce was filed) been a problem.
I am hearing that litigants have been subjected to unwanted, forced psychological evaluations, they have been hounded by concocted accusations of mental illness that never existed before, or that have been found to be non-existent by the litigant's own personal therapists.
As long as it is considered acceptable among judges and attorneys to deny people with invisible disabilities and people regarded as having those disabilities fundamental due process rights and fundamental human rights we can only view the Connecticut Judicial Branch's publication of their annual ADA reports as a yearly exercise in hypocracy.
In addition, the Connecticut Judicial Branch regularly refuses to provide people with disabilities the reasonable modifications they request. In doing so, they simply deny a disability exists and/or they will mock the person with a disability and say it isn't any big deal. Another tactic they have pursued is to turn down requests for reasonable modifications with such complex and convoluted responses that it takes forever to figure out what they are saying. So much for the "plain language" approach.
It is going to take the Connecticut Judicial Branch a long time, I know, for them to understand it is not just about having the rights signs up. It isn't simply a matter of having ramps on the buildings or having the right paperwork. It is about actually adjusting the courtroom proceedings so that a person with a disability can actually participate in that proceeding so that he or she has the opportunity to have equal access to justice--the same access that a person without a disability has.
One point that the Connecticut Judicial Branch must contend with is the fact that it cannot simply point at folks who have disabilities, particularly invisible disabilities and say you can't be a parent because you have a disability. People with disabilities have the same right to parent as those who do not.
It is also wrong for persons with disabilities to be subjected to harassment, threat and bigoted and stereotypically insulting stereotypes when they enter a court room or when they receive court documents. Attorneys who attempt to attack litigants based upon disability, who seek to deny litigants their right to parent or their right to financial support based upon disability should be sanctioned. If they are not sanctioned and the Court allows them to continue with such discriminatory actions, then that Court is in outright violation of the ADA.
I welcome this new annual report. I equally welcome the commitment to the implementation of the ADA which this Annual ADA Report is intended to imply. However, the Connecticut Judicial Branch must understand that advocates and litigants currently engaged in legal actions within the Judicial Branch truly expect the Connecticut Judicial Branch to live up to the standards of justice and equality and access which federal ADA law requires. Believe me, nothing less than that will suffice.
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