People with disabilities face widespread bigotry, segregation, and exclusion. But federal disability rights laws can provide protection.

Collage representing disability rights

If I have a disability, what are my rights at work?

Examples of disability discrimination in the workplace

  • Your boss, coworkers, or customers straight derogatory comments, jokes, or gestures toward you that are related to your disability.
  • An employer refuses to rent you, promote you lot, or pay you every bit to your coworkers because of your inability, when yous are capable of doing the job.
  • Your employer refuses to make "reasonable accommodations" – changes to how a job is washed so that you can have an equal hazard to succeed.
  • An employer demands that y'all disclose or talk about your inability when you have not asked for an adaptation.

Your rights

  • Federal law protects people with disabilities from discrimination in employment.
  • Y'all practice not have to inform an employer of your inability when you lot use for a job or when you lot are hired — even if afterward you lot need a reasonable adaptation.
  • If you can practise the task, it is unlawful for an employer to turn down to hire or promote you, to burn down or bench you, to harass you, or to pay you less because of your disability.
  • You are besides protected from unnecessary medical inquiries at work.
  • Yous take the right to ask for and receive "reasonable accommodations" that allow you lot to have an equal chance to succeed.
  • However, private employers with fewer than 15 employees are not covered by federal disability nondiscrimination laws.

What to practice if you need a reasonable adaptation

  • Allow your employer know that you lot have a disability and request a reasonable adaptation.
  • You lot may demand to provide a doctor'southward note if your employer asks for one.
  • If your employer says no to your requested modification, try to keep the conversation going. Try to think of some other change that would help, or ask your employer to look at the Chore Accommodation Network website.

What to do if you believe your rights accept been violated

  • File a charge of discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or your state fair employment practices agency.
  • Depending on your land, your deadline to file with the EEOC or your state agency may exist as brusque as 180 days.
  • If you are a federal employee, contact your EEO counselor within 45 days.
  • Contact a lawyer.

Additional resource

  • The Task Accommodation Network, https://askjan.org/
  • The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/disability.cfm
  • National Employment Lawyers Clan, http://exchange.nela.org/memberdirectory/findalawyer

I have a disability and am renting a home

Examples of inability discrimination confronting renters

  • A landlord refuses to hire to you lot because of your inability.
  • A landlord asks for a deposit that is college than that asked of tenants who practise not have disabilities.
  • A landlord prevents you from making modifications to your apartment or home to go far more accessible.
  • A landlord refuses to make reasonable accommodations to the rules — for instance, the landlord prohibits a service animal based on a blanket "no pets" policy.

Your rights

  • You lot have the correct to be treated like any other prospective tenant when applying to rent a home. Discrimination on the basis of disability is illegal under federal law.
  • Y'all are allowed to make concrete changes to your rental unit of measurement to arrive more attainable to you. Private landlords are not required to make these admission changes for you. Landlords may take the right to ask you to restore the unit to how it was or put coin in an escrow account to ensure they tin can.
  • You have a right to reasonable accommodations in in rules, policies, practices, or services.
  • You may have additional rights in public housing, in housing that is federally funded, and in public spaces associated with your housing such equally parking lots, garages, lobbies, and sidewalks.

What to do if you believe your rights have been violated

  • File a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Evolution or with a state or local fair housing agency.
  • You must file a complaint with HUD within ane year of the final date of alleged discrimination nether the Off-white Housing Human activity.
  • In some cases, the right federal agency may exist the U.Due south. Department of Justice.
  • Contact a lawyer.

Additional information

  • U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp
  • National Housing Constabulary Project, Reasonable Accommodations for People with Disabilities, https://www.nhlp.org/initiatives/fair-housing-housing-for-people-with-disabilities/reasonable-accommodations/

Navigating businesses and public spaces with a disability

Examples of disability discrimination in public spaces

  • A business organization possessor refuses to allow a person with a disability to bring a service animal inside.
  • A person opening a business organisation fails to ensure that any new construction is attainable to people with mobility or sensory disabilities.

Your rights

  • Under the Americans with Disabilities Deed, information technology is illegal for businesses open to the public such as stores, hotels, restaurants, museums, theatres, and doctors' offices to discriminate against people with disabilities. You take the right not to be excluded from these spaces.
  • The ADA only requires that businesses make architectural changes to their buildings that are "readily achievable." All the same, because the ADA has been in event for 28 years, virtually businesses and buildings should have made themselves fully accessible to people with  disabilities.
  • Newly constructed commercial buildings must be fully accessible.
  • You lot have the right to bring your service animal into any business, even those that have an explicit "no pets" policy.

What to do if you believe your rights have been violated

  • File an ADA complaint course with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Additional information

  • ADA Technical Assistance

I demand language or disability accommodations while voting

Your rights

  • Under federal law, all polling places for federal elections must be attainable to disabled and elderly voters, or must provide alternate means for casting a ballot on the mean solar day of the election.
  • Under federal constabulary, all express English language proficiency voters and voters with disabilities may obtain assistance in voting from a person of their choice, every bit long as this person is non the voter's employer, or an agent of the employer or of the voter's matrimony.
  • In some places (those covered past Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act), trained bilingual poll workers must be available to provide help in the relevant language, and ballots, written forms, and information relating to the voting procedure must be available in the covered language.
  • All polling places for a federal election must have at to the lowest degree 1 voting organisation that makes voting accessible in a private and contained style to voters with disabilities.
  • Voters with disabilities cannot be turned abroad from the polls because a poll worker thinks they do not have the capacity to vote.

What to do

  • If possible, bring a family fellow member, friend, or other person of your choice to assist you at the polls. Don't bring your employer, or an amanuensis of your employer or union.
  • Tell the poll workers that yous have chosen this person to assist you with voting. You may be required to swear under oath that yous have difficulty speaking, reading, writing, or understanding English and have asked this person to help, and the person helping yous may be required to sign a form swearing that they did not tell you how to vote.
  • Request oral assist from a bilingual poll worker if you take questions, and enquire for voting materials, such as your ballot, in your linguistic communication. (Notation: Not all jurisdictions and counties require polls to provide bilingual voting materials or language assist.)

Additional information

  • Bazelon Heart for Mental Health Law on Voting, http://world wide web.bazelon.org/our-piece of work/voting/
  • National Disability Rights Network on Voting, https://www.ndrn.org/public-policy/voting.html

I'm in prison and have a inability

Examples of discrimination confronting people in prison house with disabilities

  • Exclusion from facilities, programs, and services that are accessible to other prisoners.
  • Not providing sign linguistic communication interpreters for a deaf prisoner at disciplinary hearings, classification decisions, medical appointments,, and educational and vocational programs.
  • Failure to provide medical devices such as wheelchairs and canes to disabled prisoners.
  • Placement in segregation or solitary confinement due to perceived vulnerability or the unavailability of accessible cells in general population.

Your rights

  • Prisoners with disabilities are protected nether sections of the Americans with Disabilities Human action and the Rehabilitation Human action of 1973. In the prison and jail context, the Rehabilitation Deed applies to facilities run past federal agencies (such every bit the Agency of Prisons) and to whatever land or local agency that receives federal funding. The ADA regulates facilities run past state and local agencies, regardless of whether they receive federal funding.
  • You are entitled to an equal opportunity to participate in programs and services for which you are qualified.
  • You are entitled to be housed at your correct security level, and in a cell with the attainable elements necessary for safe, advisable housing.
  • Y'all are entitled to reasonable modifications to policies and procedures.
  • You are entitled to every bit effective advice including whatsoever necessary auxiliary aids and services such as sign language interpreters, captioning, videophones, readers, Braille, and audio recordings.
  • Prison house officials are not required to provide accommodations that impose undue financial and administrative burdens or require a fundamental alteration in the nature of the program.
  • Prison house officials are also allowed to discriminate if the disabled prisoner's participation would pose meaning safety risks or a direct threat to the health or condom of others that cannot be mitigated through reasonable modifications.

What to practice if yous believe your rights take been violated

  • File a formal grievance through your facility'south grievance procedure and appeal all levels bachelor. If your facility has an ADA Coordinator y'all may likewise contact that person and ask him/her to help yous with an accommodation for your disability.
  • You or your attorney tin file a lawsuit explaining how your rights accept been violated nether the ADA, the Rehabilitation Human action, or both. You must consummate any available grievance procedure and all appeals before filing a lawsuit in federal courtroom.
  • To bring a lawsuit under these laws, disabled prisoners must show: (1) that they are disabled within the pregnant of the statutes, (2) that they are "qualified" to participate in the program, and (3) that they are excluded from, are not immune to benefit from, or accept been subjected to discrimination in the plan because of their disability. Under the Rehabilitation Act, prisoners must also bear witness that the prison officials or the governmental bureau named equally defendants receive federal funding.
  • Depending on the situation, disabled prisoners may file claims for relief nether the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits barbarous or unusual punishment, in add-on to or instead of the ADA or Rehabilitation Deed.
  • The laws of some states may provide different or greater legal rights than the federal laws. Disabled prisoners should investigate this possibility before bringing accommodate.

Additional resources

  • Every state and U.S. territory has a federally mandated Protection and Advocacy (P&A) organization that works to provide aid and legal services to individuals with disabilities.  Some of these organizations also work with incarcerated individuals. For a complete list of all these organizations past state click here: https://world wide web.ndrn.org/ndrn-member-agencies.html