by As the world condenses, and private purses close, and public wallets tighten — the first casualties in a rotting economy are the rights of the disabled — first ugly, then protected, the disabled are now back to being the first available for kicking to the curb teeth first. When five Blind students have to sue four California law schools in order to achieve equal protection for application for study, we know the end of the civilized world is nigh upon us.
The four law schools—Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Chapman University School of Law, University of California Hastings College of the Law, and Whittier College Law School—highly encourage or require students to apply through the Law School Admission Council’s Web site, which blind applicants say they must seek assistance to use.
… the National Federation of the Blind has also filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice against nine other law schools that use the same system.
The applications on the admission council’s Web site cannot be converted to synthesized speech or Braille by the software that blind people typically use to read Web sites, according to a press release by the federation.
If disabled students are not protected from discrimination by the very school they hope to join in order to learn the law — and then help interpret the laws of our land in order to protect the innocent among us and fight the corruption around us — then what’s the purpose of even having a law school if its public behavior is to discriminate against its applicants?
It doesn’t make sense that any public or private institution would wantonly and actively discriminate against the disabled, but we live in fresh times where memories are poor and suffering is still historically mandated by the power elite — and we can certainly affirm that the Americans with Disabilities Act is now a law that no one intends to follow, or enforce any longer, and when law schools lead the way to the bright path of the destruction of basic human rights — take heed that the next most vulnerable among us are next on the hit list.
It’s a sad state of affairs, David. Sad that it takes lawsuit after lawsuit to fix that which should have never been broken to begin with.
I agree! The ADA has been the law of our land since Bush I in 1990 — and yet we still have institutions that refuse to abide the law — including law schools! It’s hopeless.