Americans with Disabilites Act

To look at how effective the ADA has been, we must first look at what the purpose of the act was. The stated purpose was to increase employment among the handicapped. This seems like a worthy goal, doesn't it? After all, at the time the ADA was passed, only 59.8% of handicapped men were employed, compared to 95.5% of non-handicapped men. [1] So what happened after it was passed? 5 years after the ADA went into effect, employment among handicapped men dropped 10.9%, to 48.9%. [1] And that was during a time of economic growth—the economy was booming in 1995. That sharp decline in employment didn't happen for non-handicapped people, just the handicapped. [1] So the ADA clearly failed by its own standards. It made tons of new regulations and rules for employing the handicapped, which encourage businesses to be wary of hiring them, since they don't want to risk lawsuits. [1] Daron Acemoglu and Joshua Angrist. "Consequences of Employment Protection: The Case of the Americans with Disabilities Act." Unpublished manuscript, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998. The handicapped do not need the government to help them get jobs. Before the ADA, employers were perfectly willing to hire handicapped people that were capable of doing the work. Overcoming a disability shows that a person is willing to work hard, and is an indication that someone is likely to be a good employee. Now, all an employer thinks when interviewing a handicapped person is that he'll be sued if he can't afford to restructure his business to accommodate that person. Were there some people that blatantly discriminated against the handicapped? Sure, there were a few. But this act does nothing at all to prevent that sort of discrimination. It's impossible to tell which employers don't hire handicapped people because they hate the handicapped, and which don't hire them because they can't afford it, as bigoted people rarely advertise their discrimination. So all this act accomplishes is to keep that discrimination secret. The ADA also often cripples businesses, hurting the economy. Business owners are required by law to make all sorts of special accommodations on their own private property. This is costly by itself, especially to small businesses just starting out, but the real cost is the lawsuits. The ADA encourages the handicapped to file frivolous lawsuits for non-accommodation. The businesses don't need to be notified about their non-compliance before the lawsuit is filed, so they don't get a chance to make the required accommodation. And most of the time, these lawsuits are frivolous, and just waste business owners' valuable time and money on legal fees. The business wins in 98% of the cases that come to court, and many more are thrown out before that. [2] But the fact that the lawsuits are unfounded and usually lose doesn't mean that the business owners don't have to pay expensive lawyer fees, or waste their time in court. These costs can be crippling to small business owners, especially in a bad economy. [2] http://mises.org... Everyone except for politicians and lawyers would be better off without the ADA. The handicapped would be better able to find jobs, and would likely face less actual discrimination. Business owners would be spared crippling compliance and legal costs. They could use that money to create more jobs, rather than enrich lawyers. Fewer small businesses would fail, and more would be willing to start up without the artificial costs of the ADA.