Even in retirement, Bush aided disabled
There’s no official textbook on how to be a former president. For the late George H.W. Bush, skydiving got the headlines. But there is another less-known contribution he made to our country. He helped fix a law that had been damaged.
As president, Bush saw that people with disabilities were being marginalized, excluded and discriminated against, and there was nothing they could do. So Bush willed Congress to act. The result: the Americans with Disabilities Act.
On July 26, 1990, Bush signed the new law with this proclamation: “Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.”
The walls didn’t tumble down. Instead, the act became a Catch-22 game of “gotcha.”
Courts started throwing out cases if a person with a disability had done well in overcoming the effects of their impairments, declaring people had no disability when they clearly did. Journalist John Hockenberry, who has a spinal cord injury, famously asked if he could throw away his wheelchair if, according to the Supreme Court, he had no disability under the law.
Bush was in retirement as these bad decisions kept coming, but he didn’t hide his views. In fact, he became involved in filing friend of the court briefs in court cases. He wrote passionately about protecting the rights of people with disabilities, even those who were prisoners. The courts didn’t listen, though.
So, he was faced with a challenge: how to make things better. There were those who feared that changing the law could make things worse. The result might even weaken the ADA. Nevertheless, the rainbow of disability rights organizations and health groups rallied together to amend the law so that the courts could no longer punish people for overcoming their disabilities. In doing so, the disability rights community replicated what Bush had done in 1990 — they worked together.
Yes, there was some opposition, but thanks to the unified effort of the senior statesman of disability rights, President George H.W. Bush, the opposition fizzled and the amendments to the ADA passed virtually unanimously in 2008. The message had been sent to those who would oppose the amendments: Get out of our way, because it’s going to the president’s desk for his signature. When President George W. Bush signed the bill — the only civil rights bill of his eight-year presidency — his father was standing at his side.
Thanks to those changes, people with diabetes, cancer and epilepsy are now covered by the ADA. People who’ve lost a limb need not worry that they have lived too good a life to be protected from discrimination or barriers. Even veterans with service dogs are protected, thanks to Bush’s advocacy. Only three years ago, a San Antonio jury became the first in the country to say that service dogs can be helpful accommodations for workers with disabilities. Progress.
So, it was all too appropriate that Bush teamed up with a trained service dog named Sully to help him through the twilight of his life.
Around the United States, there are thousands of people involved in the fight for disability rights who never would have been a part of the diverse quilt of advocates but for one man who cared. When we face challenges in the future, one of the best questions to ask is what George H.W. Bush would do, and then do it with gusto.
Griffin, a Victoria lawyer, is a member of the Texas Diabetes Council and former chair of the board of the American Diabetes Association.