>The ADA: Another Popular Bad Law
At www.cato-at-liberty.org, Wally Olson sums up the accomplishments of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Helping the disabled feels so right and necessary that it is hard for the public to understand why we libertarians view the ADA:
“as a coercive and fabulously expensive government venture into what ought to be private decision-making.”
But Olson lays out some good reasons:
“in recent months a New Jersey jury ordered a rheumatologist [3] to pay $400,000 for not providing a deaf patient with a sign language interpreter at his own expense… a federal appeals court ruled that [5] the nation’s paper currency unfairly discriminates against the disabled and must be redesigned (thus taking a different view from the National Federation of the Blind, which doesn’t think there’s a problem); a police dispatcher won a settlement [6] in her lawsuit saying she was unfairly discriminated against because of her narcolepsy (tendency to fall asleep at inappropriate times…”
Few public officials dare fight back. It is political suicide.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/2010/07/27/the-ada-another-popular-bad-law
