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Confusion over ADA should be remedied in Congress

The Americans with Disabilities Act was sold to the American people back in 1990 as a means to help those with serious disabilities &emdash; for example, the blind, the deaf and the wheelchair-bound &emdash; more fully participate in the nation's economic life.

But, as the then-Bush White House well knew, the term "disability" was left ill defined, and courts have been doing the defining ever since. The Supreme Court recently heard a case that underscores how easily the law could be stretched and abused.

The High Court heard arguments about whether two near-sighted women had a right to be airline pilots, and whether a truck driver who is nearly blind in one eye &emdash; and who had failed a Transportation Department-required vision test &emdash; has a right to drive a truck for a grocery chain.

The justices did not seem to be amused by the ADA's ambiguity. "I have difficulty reading restaurant checks in dim light," mused Justice David Souter, who said he was "at sea" in attempting to interpret the law.

Justice Sanda Day O'Connor wondered whether "Hooters" restaurants could be sued for discriminating against some women if only women with a 40 bra size were hired as waitresses. Would "accommodation" of such a "disability" require Hooters to provide breast implant surgeries? The ADA conceivably could be read that way, as absurd as it may be.

It is ridiculous that the U.S. Supreme Court must attempt to decide whether the blind and the near-sighted have to be "accommodated" in workplaces where visual safety is paramount.

Only Congress can truly fix the problems created by the ADA. But that would take a degree of political courage utterly absent from today's Washington.

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