Disability Discrimination Quotes

Been under treatment for PTSD and bipolar since 1992. I’m not ashamed of my illness. I’ve been shunned by many and I feel for those shunned, too.

What is patriotism? Let us begin with what patriotism is not. It is not patriotic to dodge the draft and to mock war heroes and their families. It is not patriotic to discriminate against active-duty members of the armed forces in one’s companies, or to campaign to keep disabled veterans away from one’s property. It is not patriotic to compare one’s search for sexual partners in New York with the military service in Vietnam that one has dodged. It is not patriotic to avoid paying taxes, especially when American working families do pay. It is not patriotic to ask those working, taxpaying American families to finance one’s own presidential campaign, and then to spend their contributions in one’s own companies. It is not patriotic to admire foreign dictators. It is not patriotic to cultivate a relationship with Muammar Gaddafi; or to say that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are superior leaders. It is not patriotic to call upon Russia to intervene in an American presidential election. It is not patriotic to cite Russian propaganda at rallies. It is not patriotic to share an adviser with Russian oligarchs. It is not patriotic to solicit foreign policy advice from someone who owns shares in a Russian energy company. It is not patriotic to read a foreign policy speech written by someone on the payroll of a Russian energy company. It is not patriotic to appoint a national security adviser who has taken money from a Russian propaganda organ. It is not patriotic to appoint as secretary of state an oilman with Russian financial interests who is the director of a Russian-American energy company and has received the “Order of Friendship” from Putin. The point is not that Russia and America must be enemies. The point is that patriotism involves serving your own country. The

People turn shit into sugar all the time—shit that’s a lot worse than whatever we’re dealing with. I’m talking physical disabilities, racial discrimination, battles against overwhelmingly superior armies. But those people didn’t quit. They didn’t feel sorry for themselves. They didn’t delude themselves with fantasies about easy solutions. They focused on the one thing that mattered: applying themselves with gusto and creativity.

The thing is very clear to us that behind every person or family, who or which is going through a difficulty, you say any kind of challenge in life then there are some obvious reasons behind the story – whether it’s poverty, illiteracy, addiction, abuse, unemployment, disability, mental illness, discrimination or anything else like that. So, for all these adverse situations, a social worker.

Schizo. It didn't matter how many times Dr. Gill compared it to a disease or physical disability, it wasn't the same thing. It just wasn't. I had schizophrenia. If I saw two guys on the sidewalk, one in a wheelchair and one talking talking to himself, which would I rush to open a door for, and which would I cross the road to avoid?

The state does not oppose the freedom of people to express their particular cultural attachments, but nor does it nurture such expression—rather [...] it responds with 'benign neglect' [....] The members of ethnic and national groups are protected against discrimination and prejudice, and they are free to maintain whatever part of their ethnic heritage or identity they wish, consistent with the rights of others. But their efforts are purely private, and it is not the place of public agencies to attach legal identities or disabilities to cultural membership or ethnic identity. This separation of state and ethnicity precludes any legal or governmental recognition of ethnic groups, or any use of ethnic criteria in the distribution of rights, resources, and duties.

You make someone into a object of – not so much of pity as of weakness, sickness, stupidity, inefectiveness, do you see what I mean? You hit them for their stupidity and their inability to respond, and when you’ve hurt them, marked them, they’re even more sick and ugly, aren’t they? And they’re afraid and cringing too. Oh, I know this isn’t very pleasant, but you did ask.” “Go on” he said. “So you’ve got a frightened, stupid, even disabled person, silenced, made ugly, and what can you do with someone like that, someone who’s unworthy of being treated well? You treat them badly because that’s what they deserve. One thinks of poor little kids that no one love because they’re dirty, sovered in snot and shit, and always screaming. So you beat them because they’re hateful, they’re low, they’re sub-human. That’s all they’re good for, being hit, being reduced even further.

Many people who struggle to find stable employment also contend with things like intergenerational poverty and/or trauma, cycles of abuse, mental illness, systemic discrimination, disability or neurological disorders. Not only are these all chronically stressful and traumatic circumstances, they have all been linked to a high incidence of impaired executive function. Welfare systems are not built to be easy for people who are anxious about using the phone, or people who mix up dates. They are not designed for people who are bad at keeping time, filling out forms, or people who can’t easily access all the relevant bank, residential and employment details from the past five years, if they thought to keep that information at all. Welfare systems don’t accommodate for transience because welfare systems are not built to be accessible, they are built to be temples of administrative doom, because, apparently, welfare is a treasure that must be protected.

Discrimination is the most polite word for abuse aka denying equal opportunity by anyone in power based on age, ancestry, color, disability (mental and physical), exercising the right to family care and medical leave, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, political affiliation, race, religious creed, sex (includes pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and related medical conditions), and sexual orientation.

We hear things like “we elected a black president,” as if that event was the magic eraser to wipe away all of the racial problems in our country in one fell swoop. But that would be like saying that in 1932, we elected a president with a physical disability, so we should stop building ramps and having reserved handicap spaces because that’s reverse discrimination against the able-bodied

The kind of self-righteous intolerance once associated with the more puritanical forms of religion and the more extreme forms of Socialism now reappeared to promote the 'rights' of women, homosexuals, racial minorities, the disabled and any group of people who could be portrayed as being 'below the line' and therefore discriminated against...Unconsciously they were using the belief that they were acting in the name of selfless moral principle simply as a cloak for asserting their ego, and as a means to enjoy feelings of moral superiority. In the cause of 'toleration' and promoting collective 'rights,' they had become possessed by a fanatical and humorless intolerance.

Unemployed people will use any number of excuses including discrimination for reasons such as disability, race, sexual orientation, religion, sex or age, or maybe there’s a shortage of jobs in their area. Well if that’s the case then they can travel to wherever the work is and go into digs. I work in construction management and regularly work with steel erectors from Ireland or Newcastle, electricians from Cardiff, fixers from Sheffield or Birmingham, steel fixers from Romania, carpenters from Poland, canteen girls from Romania, scaffolders from Lithuania, and concrete gangs of Indians, and they all travel wherever the work is and they all live in digs. We all do. It’s the nature of our industry.

Disability scholars Andrienne Asch and Erik Parens, in their seminal discussion of the problem, wrote,'Pre-natal diagnosis reinforces the medical model that disability itself, not societal discrimination against people with disabilities, is the problem to be solved.

Several themes describe misconceptions about mental illness and corresponding stigmatizing attitudes. Media analyses of film and print have identified three: people with mental illness are homicidal maniacs who need to be feared; they have childlike perceptions of the world that should be marveled; or they are responsible for their illness because they have weak character (29-32). Results of two independent factor analyses of the survey responses of more than 2000 English and American citizens parallel these findings (19,33): - fear and exclusion: persons with severe mental illness should be feared and, therefore, be kept out of most communities; - authoritarianism: persons with severe mental illness are irresponsible, so life decisions should be made by others; - benevolence: persons with severe mental illness are childlike and need to be cared for. - Although stigmatizing attitudes are not limited to mental illness, the public seems to disapprove persons with psychiatric disabilities significantly more than persons with related conditions such as physical illness (34-36).

it’s never been race that predicts the disease and disability that disproportionally afflict Black Americans, but racism. Until we come to terms with the discrimination and inequality in American medicine, Black people will continue to be harmed by the very system that’s supposed to take care of them.

Morrison, 2000). The Court also ruled that states could not be bound, as employers, by the federal laws against employment discrimination, either on the basis of age (Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, 2000) or on the basis of disability (Board of Regents of the University of Alabama v. Garrett, 2003).

That kind of betrayal could not, and would not be forgiven, he reminded himself. It wasn’t much of a mantra, but it had kept him going all day while he knew that the woman that just very well might be the one was sitting in a restaurant that discriminated against him simply because he’d had the misfortune of being born into a family with a food disability.

Although stigmatizing attitudes are not limited to mental illness, the public seems to disapprove persons with psychiatric disabilities significantly more than persons with related conditions such as physical illness (34-36). Severe mental illness has been likened to drug addiction, prostitution, and criminality (37,38). Unlike physical disabilities, persons with mental illness are perceived by the public to be in control of their disabilities and responsible for causing them (34,36). Furthermore, research respondents are less likely to pity persons with mental illness, instead reacting to psychiatric disability with anger and believing that help is not deserved (35,36,39)." World Psychiatry. 2002 Feb; 1(1): 16–20. PMCID: PMC1489832 Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness PATRICK W CORRIGAN and AMY C WATSON

If the U.S. government and nonprofit organizations, private corporations and university laboratories are going to dedicate money and time to the future, they also need to do so for the present. They need to fund accessible buses, schools, classrooms, movie theaters, restrooms, housing, and workplaces. They should support campaigns to end bullying, employment discrimination, social isolation, and the ongoing institutionalizing of disabled people with the same enthusiasm with which they implement cure research. I want money for accessible playgrounds, tree houses, and sandboxes so that wheelchair-using kids aren't left twiddling their thumbs in the present while they dream of running in the future. If we choose to wait for those always-just-around-the-corner cures, lavishing them with resources, energy, and media attention, we risk suspending our present-day lives.

We like to filter new information through our own experiences to see if it computes. If it matches up with what we have experienced, it’s valid. If it doesn’t match up, it’s not. But race is not a universal experience. If you are white, there is a good chance you may have been poor at some point in your life, you may have been sick, you may have been discriminated against for being fat or being disabled or being short or being conventionally unattractive, you may have been many things—but you have not been a person of color. So, when a person of color comes to you and says “this is different for me because I’m not white,” when you run the situation through your own lived experience, it often won’t compute.

What is patriotism? Let us begin with what patriotism is not. It is not patriotic to dodge the draft and to mock war heroes and their families. It is not patriotic to discriminate against active-duty members of the armed forces in one’s companies, or to campaign to keep disabled veterans away from one’s property. It is not patriotic to compare one’s search for sexual partners in New York with the military service in Vietnam that one has dodged. It is not patriotic to avoid paying taxes, especially when American working families do pay. It is not patriotic to ask those working, taxpaying American families to finance one’s own presidential campaign, and then to spend their contributions in one’s own companies. It

Epidemiologic theory. As a phrase, it sounds at once dry and arcane.Yet, in reality, it is vital and engaging. Epidemiologic theory is about explaining the people’s health. It is about life and death. It is about biology and society. It is about ecology and the economy. It is about how the myriad activities and meanings of people’s lives—involving work, dignity, desire, love, play, confl ict, discrimination, and injustice—become literally incorporated into our bodies—that is, embodied—and manifest in our health status, individually and collectively. It is about why rates of disease and death change over time and vary geographically. It is about why different societies—and within societies, why different societal groups—have better or worse health than others. And it is about essential knowledge critical for improving the people’s health and minimizing inequitable burdens of disease, disability, and death

Instead, “the primary purpose of modern disability antidiscrimination laws is to recognize the social roots of discrimination.”8 The ADA covers not only individuals with a mental or physical impairment, but also those who are regarded as or assumed to have such an impairment that affects their ability to do their job based on some outward difference.9 It is, thus, the “prejudice, hostility, and misunderstandings of others about their health conditions” that impairs some individuals.10 Finally, according to Levi and Klein, “transgender people are often substantially limited not as any inherent result of the condition, but as a result of the negative attitudes of others.”11 Levi and Klein compare transgender identities to other impairments like severe burn scars that provoke discomfort in others. This discomfort causes a negative attitude that affects transgender employees' ability to do their work, similar to a hostile environment in sexual harassment law. Another manifestation of this discrimination is a manager refusing to allow a transgender employee to work with customers or clients out of fear of their reaction. According

The laws that protect women and minorities and people with disabilities, among others, from discrimination are essential, and I am not suggesting they be circumvented. But I have also witnessed firsthand how they can have a chilling effect on discourse, sometimes even to the detriment of the people they are designed to defend.

Ted helped pass major social and civil rights legislation. His efforts include the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Child Care Act (both passed in 1990), and the Ryan White AIDS Care Act of 1990; he increased funding for the National Institutes of Health and many more educational, housing, medical, and support-services programs. The ADA specifically prohibited discrimination on the basis of disability, forcing the inclusion of millions of people with disabilities in education, housing, employment, sports, and more. Hatch said that even though he and Kennedy differed much on policy and philosophy, he “never doubted for a minute [Ted’s] commitment to help the elderly, the ill, and those Americans who have been on the outside looking in for far too long.

Federal law currently prohibits landlords from discriminating against prospective tenants who have had a felony conviction for drug use. Why? Because drug or alcohol abuse is considered a disability. According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): “An individual with a disability is any person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. The term physical or mental impairment may include, but is not limited to, conditions such as visual or hearing impairment, mobility impairment, HIV infection, mental retardation, drug addiction (except current illegal use of or addiction to drugs), or mental illness.”[ii]

Being terminated for any of the items listed below may constitute wrongful termination: Discrimination: The employer cannot terminate employment because the employee is a certain race, nationality, religion, sex, age, or (in some jurisdictions) sexual orientation. Retaliation: An employer cannot fire an employee because the employee filed a claim of discrimination or is participating in an investigation for discrimination. In the US, this "retaliation" is forbidden under civil rights law. Reporting a Violation of Law to Government Authorities: also known as a whistleblower law, an employee who falls under whistleblower protections may not lawfully be fired for reporting an employer's legal violation or for similar activity that is protected by the law. Employee's refusal to commit an illegal act: An employer is not permitted to fire an employee because the employee refuses to commit an act that is illegal. Employer is not following the company's own termination procedures: In some cases, an employee handbook or company policy outlines a procedure that must be followed before an employee is terminated. If the employer fires an employee without following this procedure, depending upon the laws of the jurisdiction in which the termination occurs, the employee may have a claim for wrongful termination. … In the United States, termination of employment is not legal if it is based on your membership in a group protected from discrimination by law. It is unlawful for an employer to terminate an employee based upon factors including employee's race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, or age (over 40), pursuant to U.S. federal laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967. … Many laws also prohibit termination, even of at-will employees. For example, whistleblower laws may protect an employee who reports a legal or safety violation by the employer to an appropriate oversight agency. Most states prohibit employers from firing employees in retaliation for filing a workers' compensation claim, or making a wage complaint over unpaid wages. [firing someone for political affiliation or activism away from work is not on the list]

in your life, you may have been sick, you may have been discriminated against for being fat or being disabled or being short or being conventionally unattractive, you may have been many things—but you have not been a person of color.

In their ongoing war against evil capitalists, some vengeful Democrats have their eyes on banks, which they blame for making millions of loans that resulted in foreclosures and the 2008 financial crisis. Never mind that it was progressives who forced the government to make these loans to low-income borrowers with poor credit ratings through the Community Reinvestment Act and anti-discrimination laws. They promoted minority home ownership without regard to the owners’ ability to repay, and the result was catastrophic. But being a leftist means never having to say you’re sorry—just pass a misguided policy and blame everyone else when it predictably fails. Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, emboldened by Democrats recapturing control of the House, issued a stern warning to bankers before the 2019 session began. “I have not forgotten” that “you foreclosed on our houses,” she said, and “had us sign on the line for junk and for mess that we could not afford. I’m going to do to you what you did to us.”62 How’s that for good governance—using her newfound power as incoming chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee to punish bank executives for the disaster she and her fellow Democrats caused? Waters is also targeting corporations for allegedly excluding minorities and women from executive positions. Forming a new subcommittee on diversity and inclusion, she immediately held a hearing to discuss the importance of examining the systematic exclusion of women, people of color, persons with disabilities, gays, veterans, and other disadvantaged groups.63 Why concentrate on policies to stimulate economic growth and improve people’s standards of living when you can employ identity politics to demonize your opponents?

In United States labor law, a hostile work environment exists when one's behavior within a workplace creates an environment that is difficult or uncomfortable for another person to work in, due to discrimination. … In many United States jurisdictions, a hostile work environment is not an independent legal claim. That is, an employee could not file a lawsuit on the basis of a hostile work environment alone. Instead, an employee must prove they have been treated in a hostile manner because of their membership in a protected class, such as gender, age, race, national origin, disability status, and similar protected traits.

American Disabilities Act – ADA i. A federal law that prevents discrimination of disabled persons from receiving care from healthcare providers.

People with disabilities should not be considered unadvataged because they can high self esteem as others to fulfill their potential. People should be aware that a disability is something that some people can be born with and it is not a choice for them. Therefore, they should be treated with respect and should not be discriminated because this kind of behavior can socially isolate them from being part of the rest of their community.

People with disabilities should not be considered as unadvataged because they can have high self esteem as others to fulfill their potential. People should be aware that a disability is something that some people can be born with and it is not a choice for them. Therefore, they should be treated with respect and should not be discriminated because this kind of behavior can socially isolate them from being part of the rest of their community.

Libertarians are not supposed to be egalitarians… And yet there it is: egalitarianism has become the unspoken but very real driving force in the current Official movement. Once group egalitarianism becomes the norm, other groups than blacks will clamor for the privileges of ‘victim status.’ Sure enough, that jostling for victim privilege is now the major hallmark of American politics. The Official libertarians have so far not displayed enormous affinity for Latino or disabled ‘rights,’ but they are highly enthusiastic about the ‘rights’ of women and feminism generally. And in particular, libertarians have displayed great fervor for gay ‘rights’ and stress the evils of ‘discrimination’ against gays. So ardently are libertarians devoted to gay rights that the word ‘libertarian’ in the public press has now become almost a code word for champion of gay rights. Only his pro-gay agenda accounts for the ardor of Republican libertarians toward Massachusetts Governor Weld, whom they embrace as, in the current slogan, ‘fiscally conservative but socially tolerant.’ (The ‘fiscally conservative’ refers to a one-time budget cut followed, the next time around, by a compensatory budget increase.) ’Socially tolerant,’ in the current atmosphere, means a devotion to the entire Left cultural agenda, from gay rights to compulsory multicultural propaganda and condomization in the public schools.

Labels police individuals and are intended to exert power and control over their behavior and lifestyle. Determining someone to be hetero, female, kinky, or cisgendered is to reduce them to a container, allowing no room for evolution and defining their behaviors as caused by that identity…. Any label creates a border, which causes oppression via privilege and hierarchy. The boundaries of sexual-gender categories (stereotypes) require criteria for belonging, which inherently allows for discrimination and ambivalence… The extension of one’s identity to their entire life is reductionist and oppressive… There is little commonality between the experiences of a white, lower-income, neuroatypical, disabled, forty-something, lesbian, transsexual woman and a multiracial, high-income, thirty-something, able-bodied, neurotypical, heterosexual, cisgendered woman. They may have intersecting points of shared identity or experience, but no common culture, heritage, or social field. The erasure of all the other important and meaningful traits outside of their womanhood reduces them to one common theme. This is both oppressive and naïve. Apply this same issue to “gay,” “man,” or any other identity. There is a severe reduction of many components of the self outside the limits of identity.

If you want to avoid fines and possible jail time, don’t discriminate against any of the protected classes (race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, disability, and other locally protected classes). Be careful in the language you use in your advertising, on the phone, in person, in your documents, and anywhere else in your business. And maintain good records in case someone ever wants to bring a case against you for violating the Fair Housing Laws.

As we discussed briefly in Chapter 4, federal law currently prohibits landlords from discriminating against prospective tenants who have had a felony conviction for drug use (as drug abuse is seen as a disability and is therefore covered under Fair Housing Laws), but not drug sales or manufacturing.

In the FBL worldview, disabled people thrive not because of civil rights laws and protection from discrimination, but because of their personal integrity, courage, and ability to overcome obstacles.

This focus on personal responsibility precludes any discussion of social, political, or collective responsibility. There are no billboards touting solidarity, or social change, or community development; none of the images celebrate disparate groups coming together to engage in coalition work. There is no recognition of ableism or discrimination or oppression in these materials, only an insistence that individuals take responsibility for their own successes and failures. As a result, disability is depoliticized, presented as a fact of life requiring determination and courage, not as a system marking some bodies, ways of thinking, and patterns of movement as deviant and unworthy.

there is no getting away from the fact that if you are a white, non-disabled, educated, heterosexual, middle-aged, middle- or upper-class male adhering to a version of Christianity or atheism that fits within the confines of a secular liberal democracy, then you are part of a minority that is not deemed as ‘other’ on some level by Western society, sparing you from the most obvious levels of discrimination.

Over the past few years, a loose coalition of advocates like Campbell had accomplished a goal many would have thought impossible. They had pushed through Congress a civil rights law barring discrimination against people with disabilities in jobs, in public services and public accommodations. It had passed almost unanimously, and with President Bush's support.

Discrimination in places of public accommodation was prohibited under the law  -- but access was to be provided only if it didn't hurt a business too much. It wasn't "discrimination" if the business could "demonstrate that making such modifications would fundamentally alter the nature of such goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations"; or that it would "result in an undue burden"  -- or if the change wasn't "readily achievable"  -- which the law defined as "easily accomplishable and able to be carried out without much difficulty or expense.

To be regarded as "disabled" in the U.S. is to experience powerlessness on all kinds of levels  -- physical, psychological, political. To be considered disabled is to be put in a supplicant position, the position of the "patient," told to be quiet; if you need something, to ask kindly for it. These are the strictures of disability's Jim Crow. It is really about power: disabled people are considered powerless. Anyone with any savvy is sure to tell others that they don't consider themselves disabled. President Roosevelt called himself a "cured cripple" for that very reason. "If I am talking with a person fairly ignorant of disability rights, and I want to impress upon them that we are legion, I will say, ‘Thirty to 45 percent of the population of this country is disabled,'" professor David Pfeiffer says. "That is a way of getting to the discussion of ‘what is disability'  -- so they will realize that everyone is, or will be, disabled. "But ‘disability' is an ideological term. To name a person as ‘disabled' is to give them an inferior position. In our society people identified as disabled are second-class, third-class, or even worse-class citizens. We live in a constant state of discrimination. Identifying oneself or another person as a ‘person with a disability' is an ideological act. There is no other way to describe it." Which is why not everyone with a functional difference will identify as disabled, he says. Being disabled "is a damning thing.

People wrongly assume that just because it is peaceful where they live, terrible things will be unable to reach them. My personal experience has taught me that, in the context of evil, it is simply a question of when it will be someone’s turn to suffer. No matter what race, color, religion, gender, military status, socioeconomic level, age, disability, national origin, or marital status, evil can strike anyone at any time.

The Americans with Disabilities Act may protect people with cancer (and other serious illnesses) from discrimination on the job, but we’re on our own in the bedroom.

The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. Winston Churchill in a letter to Prime Minister Asquith, advocating the forced sterilisation of disabled people

Ableism is discrimination against people with disabilities. It is the harboring of beliefs that devalue and limit the potential of people with physical, intellectual, or mental disorders and disabilities. For instance, people might believe that autistic people will never be an asset to society, and that they need to be “fixed” or “cured".

The disability system discriminates against those that are educated.

In 1989, Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality to encourage us to think about the ways in which racial and gender discrimination overlap. In her words: ‘Intersectionality … was my attempt to make feminism, anti-racist activism, and anti-discrimination law do what I thought they should – highlight the multiple avenues through which racial and gender oppression were experienced so that the problems would be easier to discuss and understand.’ Though Crenshaw originally intended the term to apply to Black women, the theory has been widely adopted and expanded. Intersectionality offers us a way to understand how multiple structures – capitalism, heterosexism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and so on – work together to harm women: women who are poor, disabled, queer, Muslim, undocumented, not white, or a combination of those things.

Ableism has been defined as “the term used to describe the discrimination against and the exclusion of individuals with physical and mental disabilities from full participation and opportunity within society’s systems and activities.” Ableism is a useful lens through which to examine much of the rhetoric generated by the anti-vaccine movement as it pertains to autism.

Housing owner associations need to put aside long-held discriminatory attitudes and concentrate on ensuring that persons with disabilities have equal opportunities to engage in all aspects of community life.

A protected group or protected class is a group of people qualified for special protection by a law, policy, or similar authority. In the United States, the term is frequently used in connection with employees and employment. U.S. federal law protects individuals from discrimination or harassment based on the following nine protected classes: sex, race, age, disability, color, creed, national origin, religion, or genetic information (added in 2008). Many state laws also give certain protected groups special protection against harassment and discrimination, as do many employer policies. Although it is not required by federal law, state law and employer policies may also protect employees from harassment or discrimination based on marital status or sexual orientation. The following characteristics are "protected" by United States federal anti-discrimination law: Race – Civil Rights Act of 1964 Religion – Civil Rights Act of 1964 National origin – Civil Rights Act of 1964 Age (40 and over) – Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 Sex – Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Civil Rights Act of 1964 Sexual orientation and gender identity as of Bostock v. Clayton County – Civil Rights Act of 1964 Pregnancy – Pregnancy Discrimination Act Familial status – Civil Rights Act of 1968 Title VIII: Prohibits discrimination for having or not having children Disability status – Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 Veteran status – Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974 and Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act Genetic information – Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act Individual states can and do create other classes for protection under state law.

Almost everyone who experienced disability and who had been the subject of a feature story (and a vast percentage of people considered "truly disabled" had been profiled in their local newspapers or on their local TV news programs) had found reporters turning their accounts of bigotry, social ostracism, prejudice, discrimination into stories of inspiration and overcoming, either glossing over  -- or never noticing  -- aspects of the story that knit it into the larger fabric of nationwide disability discrimination. A story a wheelchair user told a reporter about being denied job after job ended up not as a piece on the issue of job discrimination but a feature on the pluckiness of the disabled jobseeker.

Handicapped is not the one with a crippled body, Handicapped is the one with a crippled heart.

While every abortion is an unjust act of lethal violence against the unborn child, regardless of the mother’s reasons, there is something startling about the reality that some women choose abortion precisely because of a specific unwanted characteristic of their unborn child. Yet many of the loudest progressive voices who decry sex discrimination and disability discrimination when it comes to adults remain silent when it comes to discrimination against unborn children based on their sex or disability—or worse, they actively support these types of abortions.

In 2016, Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky went all the way to the Supreme Court to block an Indiana law that, in part, forbade abortionists from knowingly performing abortions when the reason the mother sought an abortion was to lethally discriminate against her child based on sex, race, or disability.

Neither Planned Parenthood nor any other abortion-rights group has provided evidence that women’s health ever requires aborting an unborn child due to his or her race, sex, or genetic disorder. Planned Parenthood condemns sex-, race-, and disability-based discrimination in every other context, except when it occurs in the womb.

Abortion proponents not only refuse to support laws protecting unborn children from discrimination based on race, sex, or disability, but they insist that being permitted to discriminate is a necessary component of “women’s health care,” and they take legal action to ensure that women can continue to choose abortion even for these reasons.

In modern societies we need no reminders about how immigrants are the first to face blame, rejection or attack, especially at times of economic stress or austerity. Nor that people who suffer discrimination are often ‘different’ in their sexual orientation, religious allegiance and disability, or because they contravene cultural norms: teetotallers, vegetarians, transgender people or supporters of the wrong football team.

That’s illegal,” the counselor sputtered. If Swarthmore received federal money—and it almost certainly did—they were violating Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. I was free to leave school if I chose, but they couldn’t force me out.

Indeed the most important difference between laws on SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) and race - or religion or disability or sex or virtually any other protected status - is this: over and over, SOGI laws impose gratuitously on important personal and social goods. They’re not simply about preventing ‘no LGBT people allowed’ policies. They’re designed and applied to needlessly penalize conscientious refusals to participate in morally controversial actions to which many people reasonably object, wounding moral and religious integrity and depressing pluralism. And that’s a sharp contrast indeed. - p. 185

Consider the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which was intended to safeguard disabled workers from discrimination.

The problem arises, as [Adrienne] Asch observed, when "a single trait stands in for the whole, the trait obliterates the whole." Disabled people, like African Americans or any other marginalized group, are dehumanized and oppressed by being reduced to a single, devalued trait; the path to justice must be driven by the rehabilitation of that characteristic.

People turn shit into sugar all the time—shit that’s a lot worse than whatever we’re dealing with. We’re talking physical disabilities, racial discrimination, battles against overwhelmingly superior armies. But those people didn’t quit. They didn’t feel sorry for themselves. They didn’t delude themselves with fantasies about easy solutions. They focused on the one thing that mattered: applying themselves with gusto and creativity. Born with nothing, into poverty, strife, or the chaos of decades past, certain types of people were freed from modern notions of fairness or good or bad. Because none of it applied to them. What was in front of them was all they knew—all they had. And instead of complaining, they worked with it. They made the best of it. Because they had to, because they didn’t have a choice.