This year marks the 36th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the landmark civil rights law that transformed access, employment, and community integration for people with disabilities across the country. To mark the occasion, we sat down with Robert “Bob” Dinerstein, one of the law’s early drafters, to reflect on what the ADA has accomplished, where it has fallen short, and what today’s disability rights advocates should prioritize as new legal and political threats emerge.
About Bob Dinerstein
Robert Dinerstein is professor of law emeritus at American University Washington College of Law, where he taught from 1983 to 2023. He founded and directed the law school’s Disability Rights Law Clinic from 2005 to 2023, and previously worked in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section, handling federal court cases on the rights of people in institutions for people with psychosocial disabilities, people with intellectual disabilities, and juveniles. He specializes in mental disabilities law, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and disability and international human rights. He currently serves as chair of the ABA Commission on Disability Rights.
DLU: Thirty-six years later, where has the ADA delivered the most on its original promise, and where has it fallen shortest?
Dinerstein: The ADA has certainly put disability rights into mainstream conversation and consciousness. For the most part, that has been a good thing, even though it has, predictably, generated some backlash against people with disabilities and their claims for equal treatment and equal opportunity. Substantively, Title III of the ADA has played an important role in getting public accommodations (not previously subject to disability anti-discrimination law) to provide meaningful access to their programs or activities, though compliance concerns certainly remain. Finally, as discussed below, the ADA’s integration mandate, highlighted in Olmstead v. L.C. (1999), has played a critical role in getting people with disabilities out of large institutions and into community-based programs, or preventing them from being institutionalized in the first place.
On the negative side, employment of people with disabilities, covered by Title I of the ADA, has not led to substantial improvements in their rate of employment. The rate of unemployment for people with disabilities remains unacceptably high, when compared to people with similar experience and education. The reasons for this phenomenon are complex, but restrictive Supreme Court decisions under Title I (see below) have not helped the situation. Too many people with intellectual disability continue to be employed, if at all, in segregated settings such as sheltered workshops. Applying the ADA to the internet has proven to be difficult under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
DLU: In your view, what is the role of nonprofit legal organizations in upholding the promises of the ADA?-
Dinerstein: Nonprofit legal organizations play a critical role in enforcing the ADA. Some of these are part of organized networks, such as the protection and advocacy organizations within the National Disability Rights Network. Others are legal services/legal aid or disability rights-specific organizations. The federal government has often played a key role in seeking to uphold the promises of the ADA, but its efforts have been inconsistent, and currently are in jeopardy. But even if the federal government were fully behind ADA enforcement, it could not possibly enforce the rights of all people with disabilities subjected to discrimination. Importantly, non-profit legal organizations have relationships with members of the community who can bring to their attention the kinds of practices that need to be challenged, ensuring that the issues pursued are consistent with the needs and preferences of the people most affected by discrimination.
DLU: The disability rights movement has increasingly embraced an intersectional framing, connecting disability to race, immigration status, and economic justice. How does that shift compare to how the ADA’s drafters understood disability rights in 1990?
Dinerstein: The ADA, like other civil rights statutes (the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988, etc.), tends to focus on one basis of discrimination—in its case, disability—in a unitary fashion rather than exploring the intersection of one kind of discrimination (disability) with other protected statuses (race, gender, LGBTQ+ status, etc.) Indeed, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, a precursor to the ADA (though still alive and well), defines its protections as for people who “solely by the reason of her or his disability” are discriminated against, seemingly denying intersectionality as a separate cause of action. The result is that while intersectional arguments ring true for many disability rights advocates, and accord with the lived experience of many, legal arguments under the ADA and similar statutes need to be tailored to the specific language of the statutes in question. That doesn’t mean, though, that lawyers can’t be creative and bring multiple claims based on, say, disability and race, using multiple statutes to get at the intersectional issues.
DLU: Courts have narrowed some ADA protections since 1990, including through decisions on the definition of disability and the scope of “reasonable accommodation.” How should today’s advocates think about litigating in that landscape?
Dinerstein: The Supreme Court’s infamous Sutton trilogy (1999-decided the same day as Olmstead v. L.C.) and Toyota Motor Mfg. Kentucky, Inc. v. Williams (2002) defined disability in an extremely narrow manner, preventing people with obvious disabilities from litigating the merits of their claims. It took Congress nine years to do so, but in 2008 it passed the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act explicitly to overrule those decisions. As a result, post-2008, it is easier for disabled plaintiffs to reach the merits. But other Supreme Court decisions have served to limit the scope of employment discrimination protection under Title I. To name just four: in US Airways v. Barnett (2002), the Court limited the ability of plaintiffs to prevail in reasonable accommodation cases (holding that seniority systems take priority over reassignment to a vacant position as a reasonable accommodation). In Chevron v. Echazabal (2002), the Court upheld a paternalistic approach to employees that the ADA Findings specifically reject. In Board of Trustees of University of Alabama v. Garrett (2001), the Court held unconstitutional any claim that a victim of employment discrimination could bring a suit for damages. And in Stanley v. City of Sanford (2025), the Court limited the ability of recent retirees to sue for receiving differential retirement benefits based on their disabilities.
As a result, one should be careful about litigating Title I cases in federal court. Given the conservatism of the current Supreme Court, especially in the area of employment discrimination (or, put differently, its tendency to support business interests in a variety of circumstances), the first principle should be “first, do no harm.” That said, cases where a plaintiff is denied easily provided reasonable accommodations (e.g., providing flexibility in work hours in jobs where attendance during specific time periods is not an essential function), where employees with stellar employment records are suddenly evaluated poorly and terminated after the employee discloses a disability, or where the employer refuses to engage in the interactive process of negotiating possible reasonable accommodations with the employee, are among the kinds of cases that can certainly be successful.
DLU: The Olmstead decision built directly on the ADA’s integration mandate. With recent efforts to reinterpret Olmstead’s reach for home and community-based services, what do you see as the biggest threat to that legacy right now?
Dinerstein: We recently celebrated the 27th anniversary of the decision in Olmstead. It is almost certainly the most consequential ADA decision for people with disabilities—especially those with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities—that the Court has decided. Private and governmental plaintiffs have been extraordinarily successful in using Olmstead to limit institutionalization of people with disabilities, to shutter segregated sheltered workshops, and, in general, to foster the provision of integrated services to people with disabilities.
But there are warning signs ahead. Although almost all post-Olmstead courts have interpreted the decision in a pro-integration manner, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit called into question some aspects of the decision in U.S. v. Mississippi (2023), specifically its applicability to people who are in danger of institutionalization but remain in the community. (In doing so, the court misinterpreted the holding in Olmstead, among other erroneous rulings.) A number of states (originally 17, now reduced to 8) have filed a case in federal court in Texas, Texas v. Kennedy, challenging, among other things, the legitimacy of the integration mandate. Most recently, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued a roundly criticized opinion (June 2026) purporting to argue that the courts, Department of Justice, and advocates had misinterpreted the reach of Title II and the legitimacy of the integration mandate regulation under Olmstead.
The OLC opinion does not necessarily affect existing litigation or court settlements, but it likely will affect the position the DOJ takes in investigations, settlements, and court cases. That could seriously limit Olmstead enforcement. Some defendants (e.g., in US v. Florida) have filed pleadings bringing the OLC opinion to the court’s attention. And in the Texas v. Kennedy case above, the OLC opinion might influence the DOJ to confess error or otherwise agree with the plaintiff states that the existing and long-standing interpretation of Olmstead needs to be reconsidered.
These threats are real but can be met through forceful advocacy from people with disabilities and their allies, disability rights advocacy organizations, and non-governmental litigants, who can make sure that courts do not backslide in their protection of people’s rights to live and thrive in community-based settings.
DLU: If you were advising a new generation of disability rights lawyers starting their careers today, what would you tell them to prioritize for the future of disability rights?
Dinerstein: First of all, it is important for budding disability rights lawyers to make sure to make and sustain close connections with people with disabilities and those whose lived experience animates their views about what is most important to them. Autonomy and self-determination are important to all of us, including people with disabilities, and it is critical that disability rights lawyers treat their clients with respect and dignity, and avoid paternalistic attitudes. Second, one must be creative in thinking about solutions to the problems in disability rights that continue to exist. Litigation is still an important tool in the disability rights lawyer’s toolbox, but state or local courts may be able to provide relief that federal courts in some jurisdictions are reluctant to order. Beyond litigation, informal means of dispute resolution (e.g., mediation, negotiation, etc.) may provide reasonable relief to plaintiffs without some of the risks of litigation. Finally, passion for one’s practice area, in this case disability rights, is a necessary but not sufficient basis for excellence as a lawyer. There is no substitute for thoroughness of preparation, the quality of one’s writing and research, and the power of one’s oral advocacy.