[Georgia_ahead] FW: Article from Chronicle of Higher Ed on DOJ Regulations for Higher Ed

[Bonnie Martin]

I am glad they addressed the service animal issue in a reasonable
manner, among other things.

Bonnie

 

Bonnie S. Martin, Director

Disability Services

Georgia Perimeter College

678-891-3385

bmartin at gpc.edu

 

 

________________________________

From: Disabled Student Services in Higher Education
<DSSHE-L at LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU> [mailto:Disabled Student Services in
Higher Education <DSSHE-L at LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU>] On Behalf Of Wendy
Harbour <wendy_harbour at GSE.HARVARD.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2008 9:39 AM
To: DSSHE-L at LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
Subject: Article from Chronicle of Higher Ed on DOJ Regulations for
Higher Ed

 

This article is from today's Chronicle of Higher Education, and
discusses 
how new DOJ regulations may affect accommodations in higher ed. My 
apologies for the long cross-posting, but it seemed relevant to multiple
lists and I wasn't sure whether the article itself was accessible to
screen 
readers. 

Wendy Harbour 

Proposed Federal Regulations Would Ease Up on Colleges' Responsibilities
Under Disability Law 

By SARA LIPKA 
Washington 

As Congress considers a bill that would bolster the Americans With 
Disabilities Act, the Justice Department has proposed new regulations
that 
would limit the accommodations universities and other entities must
provide 
under the existing law. 

The lengthy new regulations, which detail requirements for 
handicapped-accessible seating and qualifications for service animals,
among 
other issues, are scheduled to be published today in the Federal
Register. 
Counting Seats 

Compared with current regulations, the proposed update decreases the 
proportion of seats an "assembly area" must make accessible to people
who 
use wheelchairs. Now that figure is about 1 percent, with the exact 
proportion depending on the size of the venue. A stadium of 5,000 seats,
for 
example, must provide space for 51 wheelchairs. Stadiums larger than
that 
must provide one more space for every 100 additional seats. 
Under the proposed new regulations, a stadium of 5,001 seats would have
to 
provide space for 36 wheelchairs. One more space would be required for
every 
200 additional seats a stadium has. For a stadium with a 50,000-person 
capacity, that would mean 261-as opposed to 501-handicapped-accessible 
spots. 

"That seems like a step backwards to me," said L. Scott Lissner, who 
coordinates disability-law compliance for the Ohio State University
system. 
"I don't know of any past examples that actually reduced the standard of
access." 

At Ohio State's football stadium, Mr. Lissner said,
wheelchair-accessible 
seating is in high demand. "We're easily filling 2 percent" of all
seats, he 
said. 

The proposed revisions of regulations, he said, were driven by
professional 
arenas, which tend to draw fewer fans with disabilities than do college 
stadiums. 

The new regulations, if unchanged after a public comment period, would
be 
roughly comparable to the terms of a recent settlement between the
federal 
government and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. This spring, in 
response to a lawsuit over handicapped-accessible seating in its
football 
stadium, the university agreed to provide 329 spots-or a third of a
percent 
of its 107,000 seats-for fans in wheelchairs. 

The proposed new regulations on seating would modify the ADA Standards
for 
Accessible Design, an attempt to consolidate several building codes, Mr.
Lissner said. As of now, depending on facilities' age and the source of 
funds for their construction, colleges may be complying with the
Americans 
With Disabilities Act, the Architectural Barriers Act, the Uniform
Federal 
Accessibility Standards, and the American National Standards Institute's
guidelines. If the changes pass, Mr. Lissner said, "all of the buildings
will be under the same set of standards on campus." 

Residence halls, whether operated by or on behalf of a college, would
have 
to meet existing accessibility guidelines for "transient lodging,"
according 
to the proposed regulations. Apartment-style housing, on the other hand,
would be subject to existing requirements for residential dwelling
units. 
Prior rules did not specify how to classify campus housing for
compliance 
purposes, the Justice Department said. 

No Ferrets 
Service animals are another focal point of the new regulations. The
proposed 
rules distinguish service animals from "emotional-support animals,"
which 
they say are not covered by federal disability law. 

"Animals whose sole function is to provide emotional support, comfort, 
therapy, companionship, therapeutic benefits, or promote emotional 
well-being are not service animals," the Justice Department said in an
early 
copy of the proposed regulations posted online. 

Support animals, like ferrets and snakes, have been a sticking point for
colleges, where students have asked to keep them in residence halls and
take 
them to class. 

"The arguments have been made with increasing frequency in recent years
that 
lots of animals other than traditional service animals should qualify,"
said 
Michael R. Masinter, a professor of law at Nova Southeastern University.
The new regulations would define service animals as those that are
specially 
trained to perform a demonstrable task. That definition may still
include 
"psychiatric-service animals" that remind their owners to take
medication or 
that interrupt incidents of cutting or other self-mutilation. 

"The regulations permit one to ask what service the animal has been
trained 
to perform," Mr. Masinter said. "That's a fair question." 

Certain animals are explicitly prohibited. They include "nonhuman
primates," 
as well as "reptiles, rabbits, farm animals (including horses, miniature
horses, ponies, pigs, and goats), ferrets, amphibians, and rodents." 

The bill pending in Congress, the ADA Restoration Act (HR 3195 and S
1881), 
has concerned some higher-education officials because it defines 
disabilities more broadly than have a handful of recent court decisions
(The 
Chronicle, June 13). When the legislation, now stalled, becomes final,
the 
group it defines will be eligible for the accommodations the new 
regulations-and maybe more to follow-propose. 

Those, however, are just the minimum requirements, Mr. Masinter pointed
out. 
"All of these laws serve as a floor of what schools may provide," he
said. 
"Schools are always free to go further than where the law requires them
to 
go in accommodating students with disabilities." 

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