Home : Disability Rights

Winter 1999 -- ACLU Briefing Paper #21 on Disability Rights (02/28/2002)
People with disabilities are the poorest, least employed, and least educated minority in America. At the end of 1995, it was estimated that one out of five people in the U.S. had some level of disability, one of ten, severe. Too often, people with disabilities have been treated as second class citizens, shunned and segregated by physical barriers and social stereotypes. They have been discriminated against in employment, schools, and housing, robbed of their personal autonomy, and too often, hidden away and forgotten by the larger society. By and large, people with disabilities continue to be excluded from the American dream:

Essential Protection for People with Disabilities (02/15/2002)
During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, people with disabilities began to demand more autonomy in their lives, starting an "independent living" movement and rejecting society's attitudes of pity, charity, and rehabilitation. Congress responded with the Fair Housing Amendments Act -- "a national commitment to end the unnecessary exclusion of persons with [disabilities] from the American mainstream."

Links To other Disability Rights Resources (02/15/2002)
The following sites provide comprehensive or unique resources relating to the work of the ACLU in this issue area. While some of these sites are operated by organizations that work frequently in coalition with the ACLU, the sites may also include materials on positions we do not share. To report a broken or relocated link, or to suggest a site for inclusion on this page, use the feedback button at the bottom of this page.