July is Disability Pride Month. It’s a month where disability is celebrated, and not treated as a tragedy, as the country recognizes the continued fight for equality.
But taking center stage this year are three Trump administration directives that some say would impede disability progress in a world that, 35 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act, still regularly leaves out disabled people.
“They’re [the administration] viewing people with disabilities, perhaps as second class citizens,” Armando Contreras, president and CEO of United Cerebral Palsy, told HR Brew. “They’re viewing them in a way that they are not a fabric of our economic engine.”
Subminimum wage stays. Earlier this month, the Department of Labor abandoned a rule that would have ended the subminimum wage for disabled people, claiming that the program remains necessary. Section 14(c) was developed in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act and allows employers to pay disabled people below the minimum wage in certain instances.
Currently at least 35,000 disabled people are paid a subminimum wage, and sometimes make just 25 cents an hour, according to last year’s investigation by the Washington Post. Many disability advocates and disabled workers claim that rule 14(c) allows for segregation and exploitation of disabled workers.
For decades, advocates have called for an end to rule 14(c), and the Biden administration had been on that path before Trump came back to office. The subminimum wage will still be legal nationally but 16 states, including Illinois, Virginia, and Oregon, have already passed measures to phase it out.
Some would like to see the subminimum wage continue, and believe it’s best for people with “severe disabilities” and good for the labor market, according to the Cato Institute.
“It’'s like an economic inequality for people with disabilities.” Contreras said. “People with disabilities are the fabric of society, and they contribute to the country, and they should have the same opportunity as anybody else to earn a living wage.”
Contreras added that 14(c) is a concern for all disabled people, not just those currently making less than the minimum wage. People making close to the minimum wage could be afraid that employers will feel more open and ready to use 14(c), and possibly put more disabled workers back on a path to poverty, he said.
Federal contractor rules. On July 1, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer introduced a proposed rule that would end a key provision in Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act, Mother Jones reported. If it goes through (as expected, after the comment period ends on September 2), federal contractors will no longer be required to have disabled people make up 7% of their workforce.
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In the rule filing, the Labor Department expressed “concerns that the self-identification and utilization goal regulations [in the existing regulations] are inconsistent with the ADA.”
However, Anupa Iyer Geevarghese, former deputy policy director at the DOL’s Office of Federal Contractor Compliance Programs (which the administration shut down), told Mother Jones that employers weren’t asking the government to end the mandate and is concerned that the move restricts job opportunities for disabled talent.
Accessibility codes. Meanwhile, a Department of Energy (DOE) rule introduced in May could upend yet another Rehabilitation Act provision by eliminating Section 504 that requires new and modified federally funded buildings to abide by a universal set of accessibility standards, Facilities Dive reported.
The DOE believes the mandate, which has been in place since the 1970s, is redundant and is “unduly burdensome.” The agency was fast-tracking the rule (a move advocates said was highly unusual for this type of policy change), but placed the changes on hold on July 21, after receiving an influx of “adverse comments,” Disability Scoop reported.
Disability advocates are concerned the new rule will have far-reaching negative effects. “This would inevitably lead to the construction of less accessible or even inaccessible facilities,” Amy Robertson, a civil rights attorney, told Disability Scoop. “It would also create havoc (for) the entities that receive funding from the Department of Energy, as they would no longer have to follow the (Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards), but would still be open to liability under general non-discrimination requirements.”
Inaccessible buildings means inaccessible workplaces for disabled people, and Contreras said the new rule signals the government doesn’t care about access. “If you get hired, and you can’t go to work, are you going to even want to go to work if you don’t have an environment that is welcoming?”
Still, Contreras remains hopeful for disability inclusion moving forward. “For many years, the government was moving towards this inclusivity,” he said. “It’s my hope that they continue to play a major role, or we need to begin to bring that awareness again, that people with disabilities are part of our community. They are not a separate community.”