MEZCLAS BITUMINOSAS EN CALIENTE

8 _{For example, in Political Liberalism, John Rawls starts from the assumption that people with disabilities} are generally passive citizens who do not have anything to contribute to political life. This foundational assumption justifies the exclusion of people with disabilities from his formulations on the original position: “Since we begin the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation, we assume that persons as citizens have all the capacities that enable them to be cooperating members of society…We do not mean to say, of course, that no one ever suffers from illness of accident…But given our aim, I put aside for the time being these temporary disabilities and also permanent disabilities or mental disorders so severe as to prevent

Disabled Americans have historically been excluded from the basic rights and opportunities of citizenship in nearly every aspect of public and private life. The Garrett History Brief (2001)— an amicus curiae written by over one hundred historians and legal scholars—thoroughly documents the shameful history in the United States of people with disabilities being denied basic civil rights and opportunities. Americans with disabilities have been subject to state-mandated institutionalization, discrimination in zoning in public housing, forced sterilization, limitations on the right to marry and have children, disenfranchisement, exclusion from public schools, and more.9 It is important to note that these prohibitions have differently affected people with disabilities depending on their age, gender, race, class, and type of impairment. Nevertheless, all have felt the sting of discrimination. As demonstrated by Martha Minnow (1990), the American legal system has established a dual track in which “competent” citizens have claimed rights and “incompetent” people (which included a range of cognitively and physically impaired individuals) have been granted protections and restrictions.10

From the 1960s onward, the American disability rights movement has worked to redress this disgraceful history of exclusion and injustice. The movement started from the foundational premise that discrimination on the basis of disability is no different in any moral or legal way from discrimination based on race or sex. To this point, the central aim of the disability rights movement has been to enshrine in law the same kind of anti- discrimination principle that has protected members of other historically marginalized groups. Thus its crowning achievement to date is the Americans with Disabilities Act                                                                                                                          

9 _{Center, Claudia, et. al., “The Garrett History Brief,” Journal of Disability Policy Studies 12 (2001): 70-} 78.

(ADA), passed in 1990, which prohibits disability discrimination in the realms of employment, public services, and telecommunications. The legislation granted people with disabilities formal political equality, specifically equal protection under the law. Yet taking cues from the social model of disability, the Act’s “reasonable accommodation” clause also provided people with disabilities the positive right to demand changes from others (usually their employers, so long as the costs of accommodation did not pose an “undue hardship”), including making existing facilities readily accessible, modifying work schedules, acquiring equipment, etc.11 In describing the primary intent of the

legislation, disability scholars Robert Baird, Stuart Rosenbaum, and Kay Toombs explain that “just as the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves, officially giving them the rights of citizens enumerated in the Constitution, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 sought to bring disabled citizens into equality with their normally abled peers.”12

Largely due to this landmark civil rights legislation, Americans with a range of physical, cognitive, and psycho-emotional impairments now enjoy an unprecedented degree of opportunity to participate in our society. However, it would be misleading to suggest that people with disabilities have been fully included in American life. Although President George H. W. Bush called for “the shameful walls of exclusion” to come tumbling down when he signed the ADA, these walls have not exactly crumbled. Citizens with disabilities continue to have lower levels of political participation than nondisabled citizens of similar demographic characteristics. For instance, in the 2008 presidential                                                                                                                          

11 _{For more on the social model of disability see Michael Oliver, The Politics of Disablement (London:} Macmillan, 1990); Tom Shakespeare, “The Social Model of Disability,” in The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard Davis (New York: Routledge, 2006).

election voting rates among people with disabilities were on average 7 percentage points lower than those of nondisabled Americans, with especially low turnout among citizens with motor impairments.13 In addition, people with disabilities also disproportionately experience high levels of unemployment. According to the American Community Survey (ACS) of the U.S. Census Bureau, 46 percent of working-age people with at least one disability were employed in 2005, compared with 84 percent of nondisabled people.14 Such persistent marginalization raises difficult questions for political theorists and political activists committed to inclusion. If people with disabilities have formal rights to inclusion and non-discrimination (as guaranteed by the ADA), what kinds of structural barriers continue to prevent them from participating in society? What does full inclusion require? Thinking more broadly, why should we, as citizens of a democracy, value their inclusion?

II. SHIFTING THE FOCUS FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO SOCIAL RIGHTS: