Your Rights under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act

If you work for any entity which receives funds from the federal government, the following would seem to imply that disability discrimination by your employer violates federal law:

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973:

No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States, as defined in section 7(6), shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. (Cited in What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement - Fred Pelka, 2012)

Wikipedia's article on Section 504 adds:

Codified as 29 U.S.C. 794.
According to this law, Individuals with Disabilities are:
"persons with a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activities."

 where

"Major life activities include caring for one's self, walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, working, performing manual tasks, and learning."

In a previous post we noted cases "where the august Court cruelly denied protection to disabled individuals even though the intent of the Americans With Disabilities Act should have been clear. As the Times noted, The court went wrong by “eliminating protection for many individuals whom Congress intended to protect” under the 1990 law." The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund website notes another case where Congress found it necessary to pass a law undoing unreasonably restrictive Supreme Court interpretation of Section 504 and other disability rights legislation:

The longest legislative battle was fought over the Civil Rights Restoration Act (CRRA), first introduced in 1984 and finally passed in 1988. The CRRA sought to overturn Grove City College v Bell, a Supreme Court decision that had significantly restricted the reach of all the statutes prohibiting race, ethnic origin, sex or disability discrimination by recipients of federal funds.

An important decision overturned was a case where the Court interpreted Section 504 as meaning that only clients of the departments of an entity which actually received federal funds had protection from disability discrimination. Under current law, because of the CRRA, protection applies to the entire agency. If a college's engineering department receives federal funds, students in the English department are also protected.

There was also foot-dragging on implementing Section 504:

Section 504 was the last sentence in the 1973 Act. However, initially Joseph Califano, U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, refused to sign meaningful regulations for Section 504. After an ultimatum and deadline, demonstrations took place in ten U.S. cities on April 5, 1977. The sit-in at the San Francisco Office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, led by Judith Heumann and organized by Kitty Cone, lasted until May 4, 1977, a total of 28 days. More than 150 demonstrators refused to disband. This action is the longest sit-in at a federal building to date. Joseph Califano signed the regulations on April 28, 1977.

The Reagan administration, in addition to attempting to weaken the Voting Rights Act, attempted to undermine Section 504 when it came into power:

Over the next several years, Section 504 was somewhat controversial because it afforded people with disabilities many rights similar to those for other minority groups in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Throughout the Reagan administration, efforts were made to weaken Section 504. Patrisha Wright and Evan Kemp, Jr. (of the Disability Rights Center) led a grassroots and lobbying campaign against this that generated more than 40,000 cards and letters. In 1984, the administration dropped its attempts to weaken Section 504.

When any governmental agency's employees discriminate against the disabled, they are acting in the name of the taxpayers who fund them. For example, public transit organizations receive substantial federal assistance. So does every state. We know of a case where a disabled person, having his driver's license renewed, heard the state photographer say, "Whiskey, cheese, harelip." That bigoted employee was acting as a proxy for the public. When he attempted to demean, degrade and intimidate a citizen making a required license application, he represented you and me.

Whether the license applicant could have sought redress under Section 504 is unknown. Public action under Americans with Disabilities legislation and Section 504, to date, has been entirely about access, with notable success. Protection from discriminatory attitudes and acts designed to humiliate, marginalize, and disenfranchise the stigmatized disabled, hasn't even begun. As an earlier post cited:

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

My dream is an American dream, that one day America will rise up and live out the meaning of its creed, that all are created equal.