First off, I want to wish everyone a happy new year! Hope everyone had a happy and safe new year. Back to the grind for all of us and back to school for our kids. Before moving on to the blog entry of the week, a lot has happened over the last two weeks. The
regulations
Regulatory Developments
I know I said that I would not be blogging until after the new year started. However, my wife and daughter are hanging out with lunch and a trip to Bed Bath & Beyond. Since we are Jewish, one could ask why we would be making a trip to Bed Bath & Beyond two days…
Using the rehabilitation act to get around sovereign immunity in Title II cases
Under Tennessee v. Lane, the equal protection class persons with disabilities fall into is going to depend upon the facts and circumstances of the individual case. That equal protection class is also going to dictate how likely a state is going to be able to defend on the grounds of sovereign immunity. The question…
Service dogs and the Department of Justice regulations: can they be challenge successfully?
In a comment to the service dog v. therapy dog blog entry, I promised that I would follow-up with an exploration of whether the Department of Justice regulations with respect to service dogs and how they differ from therapy dogs and the corresponding difference in treatment with respect to the ADA, would survive a challenge…
Service Dogs v. Emotional Support Animals
One of the confusing issues out there is the difference between a service dog, emotional support animal, and a therapy dog and why it matters. 28 C.F.R. § 35.104 and 28 C.F.R. § 36.104 (the sections of the federal regulation that apply to service animals for public entities and for places of public accommodations respectively),…
LSAT and Title III discrimination
Anybody that wants to go to law school must take the LSAT, law school admission test sponsored by the law school admission Council (LSAC) . The LSAT is a standardized test consisting of 100 multiple-choice questions ( Binno v. American Bar Association, 2012 WL 4513617, *1 (E.D. Mich. September 30, 2012)), divided into five…
Olmstead evolves
In Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581 (1999), United States Supreme Court held that it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act for for a State to have a system that did not allow persons with mental illness to be treated in the community. Since that time, the United States government has been very aggressive…
Has the EEOC gone too far?
In an informal discussion letter, http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/foia/letters/2011/ada_qualification_standards.html , the EEOC said that using high school graduation as an automatic cut off for a job could lead to a situation where persons with disabilities are able to successfully claim that the requirement is unlawfully screening them out from the position since for a variety of reasons some…
Ripped from the headlines: direct threat
http://articles.philly.com/2012-02-08/news/31038138_1_hiv-positive-safety-of-other-students-admission
The above link involves the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania filing a suit in Philadelphia in December arguing that a boarding school discriminated against an HIV-positive teenager who applied to a school that served low-income families. The school is a residential boarding school. The teenager appeared to meet the initial minimum qualification for admission.…